Ken, If we can make a site design that is solid, accessible and not hard to maintain, I am in favor of whatever gets us there.
The new design is not beautiful on my Android phone's browser, but I was able to navigate. We might want to make some provision for accessing the HPR site on mobile devices with smaller screens. That's it from here. Charles in NJ Sent from my android device. -----Original Message----- From: Ken Fallon <[email protected]> To: [email protected] Sent: Fri, 20 Dec 2013 6:51 AM Subject: Re: [Hpr] New HPR website design -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 Hi All, Forgive the cutting and pasting of the comments but I want to group them for a FAQ page. !! 0) HPR is open to *all*, not some, not most, simply all. Jonathan Nadeau, listens to HPR. http://accessiblecomputingfoundation.org/jonathan-nadeau While you are there contribute < ${time of year guilt trip.} > 1) People using text mode browsers > 2) People using screen readers or other accessibility aids Please read http://accessites.org/site/art-texts/0702-olsson_gracef-degrad-progres-enhanc.txt, which is an excellent article on the correct approach. Rarely are Graceful degradation or progressive enhancement done. Even by people that know better, and that have the resources to do it correctly. Please see attached files G+js.png and G-js.png. > 3) People who are unjustifiably paranoid about allowing remote sites > to run client side code Our site is called *Hacker* Public Radio. It's hard enough to get some people over the stigma surrounding the word *Hacker* to get them to the site in the first place. The use of JavaScript on the site would add an additional layer of paranoia. 4) People on slow or expensive connections It (usually) increases the amount of data that needs to be downloaded increasing bandwidth costs on people with slow, expensive, connections or with bandwidth caps. These costs will still be incurred if people choose to use a JavaScript blocker or not. Example http://www.blogspot.nl/ - -rw-rw-r--. 1 ken ken 43795 Dec 19 14:43 withjs.txt - -rw-rw-r--. 1 ken ken 199 Dec 20 08:32 textonly.txt 5) People using slow hardware. I'm not just talking about people using old dedicated screen readers, or people with low income using old computers, but also people connecting via hackable hardware. We need to be fast for people using Arduinos or RasberryPi's. Even those of you lucky enough to fall into the category of "most people", who among us has not at one time or another decided to upgrade all our computers at the same time, only to forget one minor step on page 40 of the readme file. Now you know HPR has a show about that problem and a wokaround. but the only device you have is an old laptop running a version of Windows 95. 6) JavaScript encourages bad design People are using JavaScript just because they can rather than when they need to. This is nothing new, and was true with Marquee text/animated gifs on GeoCities, then the use of JavaApplets, then the use of Active X/"designed for Internet Explorer", then the use of Flash, and now JavaScript. If we come across a area where we absolutely need JavaScript then we can signal that to the visitor so they can choose to use it or not. See sites that have "Follow Us" buttons follow you as you scroll down the page. 7) It removes control from the Visitor Imposing one and only one way of displaying the data on a page is rude. Not having a "View - Page Style - No style." is a bug. 8) JavaScript is associated with tracking, been intrusive and annoying. Just like Flash advertisements before it, JavaScript has the reputation of been used to solicit user intervention, monitor, track and report our use on the Internet. While this would not be true on HPR, the technology itself has a bad reputation and therefore would tarnish us with the same brush. > Designing a site with no JavaScript limits its capabilities. I see no reason why this should be the case for HPR as the site is entirely driven by php, or perl, and changes once a day. The only two areas where I can see that JavaScript would be useful would be to record audio, or as a upload progress bar. The upload progress bar is something that can be added to FireFox as a plugin, or we could point to a "click here for a javascript progress bar". Although a "keep this window open until you get our confirmation email" would also work. The audio recorder functionality is something that will probably require the use of a Flash or Java Plugin anyway. > I suppose that writing a website that degrades gracefully basically > means double the normal amount of testing. Yes and we do not have the resources to develop or test it. If someone wishes to take this on they are more than welcome. As with all software submitted to HPR, we expect the submitter to offer a minimum of two years of support. And again be aware that we are called *Hacker* Public Radio, which draws the attention of people that will ensure your code merits the label. If someone wishes to develop a JavaScript site for us then you have our full support but the choice to use the site or not should be given to the visitor. Either by using a sub-domain or a additional parameter in the url. - ---------------------------------------------------------------- Please keep your comments coming in about the proposed web design (and JavaScript discussion) and also bug fixes for the css and html. Now to steer us back on track a little. I hope you agree that whither we use JavaScript or not should not take away from the decision to move to this design. Does anyone have any objections to us moving to this design ? 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