php-general Digest 17 May 2009 14:20:31 -0000 Issue 6126
Topics (messages 292693 through 292698):
Re: CSS & tables
292693 by: Michael A. Peters
292694 by: Paul M Foster
292695 by: Michael A. Peters
292698 by: Nathan Rixham
Re: read the last line in a file?
292696 by: Per Jessen
292697 by: Michael A. Peters
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--- Begin Message ---
Stephen wrote:
My sites are still viewable, and can be navigated. They just look strange.
Government workers are used to strange :)
Stephen
My experience is that government web sites are often the worst,
frequently designed in MS word using brutally illegal html that only
works in IE.
They have fixed most of it, but one awful example was certain parts of
the Shasta County website - MS word produced an html document involving
really weird namespaces (illegal in html) that looked OK in IE - but in
any other browser, you were presented with images of the text - images
that then were scaled so you couldn't even read the text was written
unless you clicked on an image and chose "view image" to see the image
at it's native resolution.
That's why government sites need regulation about web design. Often they
would rather let their secretary do the site in word than use some of
their budget to hire someone who actually knows what they are doing.
Laws that force them to meet certain standards forces them to hire
someone who knows what they are doing.
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--- Begin Message ---
On Sat, May 16, 2009 at 08:12:29PM -0700, Michael A. Peters wrote:
> Stephen wrote:
>
>>>
>> My sites are still viewable, and can be navigated. They just look strange.
>>
>> Government workers are used to strange :)
>>
>> Stephen
>>
>
> My experience is that government web sites are often the worst,
> frequently designed in MS word using brutally illegal html that only
> works in IE.
>
> They have fixed most of it, but one awful example was certain parts of
> the Shasta County website - MS word produced an html document involving
> really weird namespaces (illegal in html) that looked OK in IE - but in
> any other browser, you were presented with images of the text - images
> that then were scaled so you couldn't even read the text was written
> unless you clicked on an image and chose "view image" to see the image
> at it's native resolution.
>
> That's why government sites need regulation about web design. Often they
> would rather let their secretary do the site in word than use some of
> their budget to hire someone who actually knows what they are doing.
>
> Laws that force them to meet certain standards forces them to hire
> someone who knows what they are doing.
Are you the same guy who was lobbying for the licensing of PHP/HTML
programmers? Argh.
Paul
--
Paul M. Foster
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--- Begin Message ---
Paul M Foster wrote:
On Sat, May 16, 2009 at 08:12:29PM -0700, Michael A. Peters wrote:
Stephen wrote:
My sites are still viewable, and can be navigated. They just look strange.
Government workers are used to strange :)
Stephen
My experience is that government web sites are often the worst,
frequently designed in MS word using brutally illegal html that only
works in IE.
They have fixed most of it, but one awful example was certain parts of
the Shasta County website - MS word produced an html document involving
really weird namespaces (illegal in html) that looked OK in IE - but in
any other browser, you were presented with images of the text - images
that then were scaled so you couldn't even read the text was written
unless you clicked on an image and chose "view image" to see the image
at it's native resolution.
That's why government sites need regulation about web design. Often they
would rather let their secretary do the site in word than use some of
their budget to hire someone who actually knows what they are doing.
Laws that force them to meet certain standards forces them to hire
someone who knows what they are doing.
Are you the same guy who was lobbying for the licensing of PHP/HTML
programmers? Argh.
No - not me.
I do like w3c compliant code in most cases (I could care less if, say, a
custom attribute that means nothing to display is used w/o defining a
custom DTD), but I don't want any kind of licensing program. Such a
program even if it had good intentions would be impossible to enforce
given the international nature of the web.
I do however feel that government sites need to work in any reasonably
modern browser. Commercial sites - those with poor design will often
ultimately lose business. Government sites though provide information
that I as a citizen and tax payer have a right to access regardless of
what operating system and browser I use. The information needs to
accessible whether I'm using the latest browser or lynx.
--- End Message ---
--- Begin Message ---
Ashley Sheridan wrote:
On Sat, 2009-05-16 at 09:15 -0400, Robert Cummings wrote:
On Sat, 2009-05-16 at 10:48 +0100, Ashley Sheridan wrote:
On Sat, 2009-05-16 at 02:25 -0400, Paul M Foster wrote:
On Fri, May 15, 2009 at 01:25:42PM -0400, PJ wrote:
I know of no better place to ask. This may not be strictly a PHP issue,
but...
I am busting my hump trying to format rather large input pages with CSS
and trying to avoid tables; but it looks to me like I am wasting my time
as positioning with CSS seems an impossibly tortuous exercise. I've
managed to do some pages with CSS, but I feel like I am shooting myself
in the foot or somewhere...
Perhaps I am too demanding. I know that with tables, the formatting is
ridiculously fast.
Any thoughts, observations or recommendations?
I think it's pretty telling that on a list of professionals who create
websites constantly, the overwhelming concensus is that for forms,
tables are the preferred solution.
I liken this sort of discussion to the dichotomy between movie critics
and people who actually go and see movies. The critics inevitably have
all sorts of snobby things to say about the movies which are best
attended. I'm not sure why anyone listens to any critic on any subject.
Paul
--
Paul M. Foster
I think the argument of tables vs css can go a little deeper too. These
days, sites should not only be developed with good clean code that
validates, but semantic markup. If your client doesn't like/know what
this is, just give it to them in terms of seo!
FWIW, everything I've read indicates that tables don't affect SEO.
Cheers,
Rob.
--
http://www.interjinn.com
Application and Templating Framework for PHP
SEO is not the be and end all. Accessibility is a legal thing in many
countries; UK and Australia especially (they are the two most prominent
I know) so there's no excuse for shoddy coding. I'm not saying that
using tables inevitably leads to that, but more often than not, tables
are used in such a way that the reading of a page is wrong because the
elements appear in the code in the wrong order, even though they
visually appear correct. It's not the responsibility of the
speech/Braille browsers to interpret code designed for a seeing user.
They should only have to interpret semantics.
Rob; sorry, this isn't a pop at you, I just wanted to explain to anyone
who got hooked too much onto the SEO line you mentioned. I agree with
you in that respect though, I've never seen any evidence for tables
having any impact on SEO, and I've done a lot of SEO research!
Ash
www.ashleysheridan.co.uk
here's what I do..
I open the page in firefox, using chris pederick web developer toolbar I
hit ctrl+shift+s (to disable css); and if the page doesn't look and read
like a well formatted general document then I consider it to be made
incorrectly.
ash's site is a good example of it done properly, the only think he's
missing is either a space between his navigation elements at the top of
the page, or they could be popped in a ul.
Really there is no excuse, I've never seen a layout yet that can't be
created without tables, and haven't for many years - and the old "I
don't have the time / resources" doesn't really float either, as once
you've done it 2 or 3 times you can make table-less layouts at the same
speed if not faster, not only this but they are far lighter (as less html).
It's the equivalent of somebody coming here with ancient PHP 3 and
advocating that they use it because they don't have time to learn or
change to a newer version - only difference is that table based layouts
are older than php 3 :p
nath
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--- Begin Message ---
Tom Worster wrote:
>> 1) the inotify interface will alert you when a file or directory
>> changes.
>
> do you mean the pecl inotify extension?
Not specifically, but if that's how inotify is available in PHP, then
yes.
> that would eliminate the polling and the associated lag. but the php
> manual says it requires linux. if that's the case then it's not going
> to work for me. the app i'm working with runs on os x.
inotify comes with linux, yes.
>> 2) run tail -f logfile | <yourscript> and read from stdin. (not
>> tested).
>
> i thought of this but i couldn't see much difference between reading
> from stdin and opening the log file itself and reading from that
> (reading and tesing for eof periodically in both cases i suppose). but
> i may be missing something in your suggestion.
With the above, your code can just keep reading from stdi, no need to
check for eof etc.
>> 3) if you can change the logfile to a fifo, you're all set.
>
> i don't have any control over the app that writes the log file. if
> there were a utility like tail -f that opens a fifo for output rather
> than outputting to sdtout...
Once piped to your script, reading from stdout will be just like reading
from a fifo.
/Per
--
Per Jessen, Zürich (16.2°C)
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--- Begin Message ---
Tom Worster wrote:
do you mean the pecl inotify extension? that would eliminate the polling and
the associated lag. but the php manual says it requires linux.
Yup - and it's kernel, so I don't think it could easily be ported to OS X.
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