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There are 7 messages in this issue.
Topics in this digest:
1. Re: Butterflies
From: Keith Gaughan <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
2. OT: Browser troubles and overdesigned web pages (was Re: Where does
everyone live?)
From: Jörg Rhiemeier <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
3. Re: OT: Browser troubles and overdesigned web pages (was Re: Where
does everyone live?)
From: Larry Sulky <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
4. Re: : Butterflies
From: João Ricardo de Mendonça <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
5. Re: fruitbats (wasRe: Butterflies)
From: João Ricardo de Mendonça <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
6. Re: : Butterflies
From: R A Brown <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
7. Re: OT: Browser troubles and overdesigned web pages (was Re: Where
does everyone live?)
From: R A Brown <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
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Message: 1
Date: Mon, 7 Nov 2005 14:13:05 +0000
From: Keith Gaughan <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Butterflies
Benct Philip Jonsson wrote:
> I suppose you know the Swedish word is _fjäril_ and
> 'moth' is _nattfjäril_ "night-butterfly".
Similarly, the Irish for 'butterfly' is 'féileacán' and 'moth' is
'féileacán oíche' (butterfly night-GEN). The word 'leamhan' is also used
for 'moth'. The topic of insects hasn't entered the vocabulary of any of
my conlangs yet, so I can't comment there.
K.
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Message: 2
Date: Mon, 7 Nov 2005 20:14:46 +0100
From: Jörg Rhiemeier <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: OT: Browser troubles and overdesigned web pages (was Re: Where does
everyone live?)
Hallo!
taliesin the storyteller wrote:
> * R A Brown said on 2005-11-06 08:46:21 +0100
> > * Henrik Theiling wrote:
> > > What's the big problem about designing pages that are at
> > > least visible in all browsers? *shakes head*
> >
> > I've more than once spent considerable trying to get things to behave
> > more or less the same way in different browsers on my Mac only to
> > discover when I view the pages on my wife's PC running Windows XP that
> > at least one browser - usually IE - mangles the thing :=(
> >
> > What's the big problem with the browser designers getting them all to
> > read read code in a similar way? *shakes head*
>
> <rant>
> Ah, but you see, there are two standards. One de jure, which is defined
> to painstaking detail by w3c.org, the other de facto, defined by however
> Internet Explorer behaves this week. The former changes slowly, the
> latter each time Microsoft releases a new patch. The former can be
> learnt by reading the w3c's standards, the latter by reading the w3c's
> standards, implementing them and then see what does and doesn't work.
> Simple, really.
Well put.
> However, the real problem is not Microsoft. The real problem is the
> attitude is "What I the designer see is what everybody ought to see."
> Why is this so hilariously wrong? Simple: You can never know in advance
> whether the content you are prettifying will be read by another
> designer, a real human, a program, a blind person, or a dog, on a tv, a
> cellphone, a monitor, by lights blinking morse code or in some fashion
> not invented yet. The most important of these is beeing readable for
> programs, if a page is not, it will not be indexed by search engines,
> thus be invisible and for some people (say, fanatic Wikipedians) this
> means the page in question does not exist. Programs can't see the pretty
> colors and the nifty left-aligned flash-scrollbar at all.
Yes. Many web pages are ridiculously overdesigned. They are
examples of what is called "putting on one's trousers with a pair
of pincers", i.e. doing something in an overly complicated and
misguidedly sophisticated way. Those web designers use JavaScript,
style sheets, Flash and hundreds of tricks not because it makes
sense, but merely because they want to show that they can do all
that. Bummer. Load a page? <a href="page.html"> is waaaay to
ordinary for those folks, they invoke a javascript for that
purpose.
> What to do? Simplify. It's not the wrapping, it's the message. Use
> Occam's razor. Cut until there's nothing left that can be cut. Ignore
> the desire for pixel perfection. The lovely red won't be red and lovely
> for the large amount of color-blind people out there anyway.
> </rant>
Yep. Keep it simple.
> Now, I won't claim that my pages are perfect, I know that the frontpage
> is all wrong for the color-blind for instance, and font-sizes vary like
> crazy. The Taruven-pages can't even be read comfortably on extremely
> small screens because the examples are set in <pre>-tags. BUT: Strip
> away all the colors and effects and it's only the color-coded examples
> that lose information. (I'm still working on how to improve the encoding
> of examples in (x)HTML.) I used to test *all* my html in Lynx, because
> if it looks good in Lynx, it'll be readable everywhere, but currently
> Lynx seems to have a problem with UTF8.
Yes. Test your page in every browser you can get your hands on,
not forgetting the old clunkers. If Lynx can make sense of your
page, you probably did a good job. If it doesn't, try again.
There's nothing wrong with style sheets and other stuff to prettify
your pages, but they should work without.
Greetings,
Jörg.
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Message: 3
Date: Mon, 7 Nov 2005 16:45:42 -0500
From: Larry Sulky <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: OT: Browser troubles and overdesigned web pages (was Re: Where
does everyone live?)
I'm finding that Safari on Mac doesn't pay any attention to such wild font
maneuvres as italic and bold when loading a page from my hard drive, though
it's okay loading the same content from a web server. Meanwhile, IE on Mac
doesn't know how to count numbered list items above about 40.
So even though I keep my pages very very simple -- just using 10-year-old
HTML tags (and well-formed, don't you know) -- I still am never sure whether
they're going to work for everyone, or even for me.
---larry
[This message contained attachments]
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Message: 4
Date: Tue, 8 Nov 2005 00:19:08 -0200
From: João Ricardo de Mendonça <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: : Butterflies
On 11/3/05, caeruleancentaur <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> The Spanish is mariposa. Etymology? Is the Portuguese similar?
In Portuguese, mariposa means "moth". The word for "butterfly" is
borboleta. I don't know the etymology, but I can check it at the
library later.
Perhaps the original natlang list should be enhanced to include the
moth as well, since it seems some languages make no distiction between
butterflies and moths, or derive one word from the other. Besides the
Portuguese/Spanish example above, what caught my eyes was Czech mot'l
and Polish motyl. Could they be related to English moth, or is it just
a coincidence?
João Ricardo de Mendonça
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Message: 5
Date: Tue, 8 Nov 2005 00:29:55 -0200
From: João Ricardo de Mendonça <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: fruitbats (wasRe: Butterflies)
On 11/4/05, Jonathan Chang <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> :: de-cloak/de-lurk ::
>
> Hiya Peeps,
> another similar word to _butterfly_ to translate is _fruitbat_.
> (BTW I am really curious how German, French, Italian, Dutch,etc. & various
> conlangs would translate the phrase "gooey fruitbat")
Portuguese for bat is morcego. I don't know a word for "fruitbat". I
googled for it and came up with "morcego de frutas" or "morcego das
frutas" for the Artibeus lituratus.
gooey fruitbat = "morcego de frutas pegajoso" or "morcego de frutas peguento"
João Ricardo de Mendonça
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Message: 6
Date: Tue, 8 Nov 2005 14:04:31 +0000
From: R A Brown <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: : Butterflies
João Ricardo de Mendonça wrote:
> On 11/3/05, caeruleancentaur <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>
>>The Spanish is mariposa. Etymology? Is the Portuguese similar?
>
>
> In Portuguese, mariposa means "moth". The word for "butterfly" is
> borboleta. I don't know the etymology, but I can check it at the
> library later.
>
> Perhaps the original natlang list should be enhanced to include the
> moth as well, since it seems some languages make no distiction between
> butterflies and moths, or derive one word from the other.
...and some languages have quite distinct words for the two sorts of
critters - English & Welsh, for example. Yes, I think "moth" should be
included also.
While for butterfly, Welsh uses phrases such as "glöyn byw" (glowing
piece of coal), "iâr fach yr haf" (Summer's little hen) or words that
were originally hypocorism, namely "pili-pala" - the moth has a proper
word of its own, namely "gwyfyn".
--
Ray
==================================
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
http://www.carolandray.plus.com
==================================
MAKE POVERTY HISTORY
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Message: 7
Date: Tue, 8 Nov 2005 14:32:12 +0000
From: R A Brown <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: OT: Browser troubles and overdesigned web pages (was Re: Where
does everyone live?)
Jörg Rhiemeier wrote:
> Hallo!
>
> taliesin the storyteller wrote:
>><rant>
>>Ah, but you see, there are two standards. One de jure, which is defined
>>to painstaking detail by w3c.org, the other de facto, defined by however
>>Internet Explorer behaves this week. The former changes slowly, the
>>latter each time Microsoft releases a new patch. The former can be
>>learnt by reading the w3c's standards, the latter by reading the w3c's
>>standards, implementing them and then see what does and doesn't work.
>>Simple, really.
>
>
> Well put.
Maybe - it is all very well ranting. So what do we do when w3c's
standards don't work? I have a simple bit of coding which appears to
work in most browsers - but guess which one ignores it?
Unfortunately 'Jo Public' is most likely to have some version of IE
running in some version of Windows. If I want my quite simple pages to
be seen more or less the way I would like by people likely to view the
page then Microsoft seem to be playing the tune & one gets skeptical
about w3c and standards.
Yes, I *know* there are better browsers than IE and other OSs than
Windows - but the plain fact is that the ordinary 'person in the street'
is most likely to be using MS products, whether we like it or not.
>
>>However, the real problem is not Microsoft. The real problem is the
>>attitude is "What I the designer see is what everybody ought to see."
>>Why is this so hilariously wrong? Simple: You can never know in advance
>>whether the content you are prettifying will be read by another
>>designer, a real human, a program, a blind person, or a dog, on a tv, a
>>cellphone, a monitor,
Yes - I am well aware of all this. But if I am designing a page for a
population which I know is human and that the vast majority of them are
going to be reading it on a computer monitor, then it does not seem
unreasonable to me to expect straightforward stuff to have basically
similar appearance.
>>by lights blinking morse code or in some fashion
>>not invented yet. The most important of these is beeing readable for
>>programs,
Obviously!
[snip]
>
> Yes. Many web pages are ridiculously overdesigned.
Yes, yes - I am not concerned with those.
> Those web designers use JavaScript,
> style sheets, Flash and hundreds of tricks not because it makes
> sense,
I've never used Flash - and I use style sheets & Javascript only when it
makes sense to do so.
>but merely because they want to show that they can do all
> that. Bummer. Load a page? <a href="page.html"> is waaaay to
> ordinary for those folks, they invoke a javascript for that
> purpose.
Rather stupid of them, I think. If something works, why fix it?
>
>>What to do? Simplify.
I do try to keep things as simple as possible.
>>It's not the wrapping, it's the message. Use
>>Occam's razor. Cut until there's nothing left that can be cut. Ignore
>>the desire for pixel perfection. The lovely red won't be red and lovely
>>for the large amount of color-blind people out there anyway.
>></rant>
Er, sort of like having red text on a black background ;)
Yes, I am well aware of color-blind problems - I was giving lectures on
'Human-Computer Interface' for several years before I retired.
[snip]
>
> Yes. Test your page in every browser you can get your hands on,
I try to.
Some may remember I tried to tidy up the left navigation bar on my
Briefscript pages by having slide-out menus. But while they worked on
some browsers (even some variants of IE), some treated them oddly and
some just gave up. There doesn't seem to be general consistency in the
way browsers interpret Javascript, which is one reason I do not use it
unless I can see no alternative.
--
Ray
==================================
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
http://www.carolandray.plus.com
==================================
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