Re: [WSG] Art and accessibility

[Katrina]

Jermayn Parker wrote:

I read this discussion and I think it's strange.

The universitys and tafes are usually taught by lecturers who have no formal understanding or knowledge themselves about web standards etc. 


But there are many practitioners out there doing fantastic things 
without formal knowledge either. Formal here I have taken to mean 
tertiary courses in the area. Formal knowledge in a realm so new isn't 
that important - yet.




It also is hard for them to change the content of their units as they usually 
get revised every 5 odd years, also the lecturers are not paid for study and 
revising the units, they only get paid for class time. So why should they do 
extra unpaid work for ungrateful students???


In the realm of science, things are updated all the time. This is the 
norm and is expected. Science university courses are frequently 
re-written. It is also the norm that lecturers are expected to revise 
and update the course as when needed. It's part of their job.


University educators are expected to do research as well, as well as 
keep up their professional habits of continually updating themselves. So 
they *should* be up to date. If they are not, then perhaps it is us who 
has somehow failed them in helping to update them. We need to find out 
how we have failed them, and how we can best help them to stay at the 
fore-front.



But the strangest thing of all is this:
In this debate, we totally write off current practitioners who are in 
the field today, as though they were a lost cause. Can you imagine if 
the medical or law fraternity made a decision like this? We may still 
have trepanning! Or doctors recommending smoking for relaxation ;)


As web developers, information architects and designers, we should have 
the skills amongst ourselves to be able to profile who it is we want to 
target, how to best target them, and bring them into the standards fold. 
 This is hard for us to do on an individual level.


What we lack is a professional body that is strong to enough to want to 
promote professional habits of up-skilling to all Web Industry 
Professionals, through various methods. I have a lot of hope that WIPA 
will fill this void.





btw incase your wondering im not a lecturer - lol...
I have raised this issue with my previous lecturers and they informed me of 
these government standards on lecturers



[EMAIL PROTECTED] 25/01/2007 10:02:12 am >>>

Doesn't the ACS (In Australia) claim to be our peek standards body? (Also
assuming that Web Dev comes under the "Computing" banner). Wouldn't they (or
somebody like them) be the ones to issue a certificate? (One look at their
web site will tell you how seriously they take web standards.)



The attitude seems to be that web development isn't real IT. The funny 
thing is that people in the webby area also seem to feel this way. I 
brought this up on another list and quite a few were adamant that an IT 
professional was one that hooked up networks. To me, an IT person is 
someone who can work with either information or computer systems, from 
either the technical or human standpoint.


That would then include web developers, information architects, 
usability consultants, and many other titles of those who work with the web.


WIPA should take this up with the ACS and get some recognition! :)

Kat


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[WSG] text/background color disappering in IE 7

[Tee G. Peng]

In this page:
http://project.lotusseedsdesign.com/sh-all/bookmarks_listview.html

the below lines of texts and background colors are disappearing in IE7:

rsf1977 posted 1 hour ago at 09:52 PM PST on Jan 23, 2007   
{background: #ff9899;  }
 mamepyon originally posted 3 months ago at 10:33 AM PDT on Oct 24,  
2006  {background: #ffcccb;}


If I mouse over to the affected area, it shows up.


This seems to be a common bug of IE 7, when background colors are  
declared in each div, the one on top, the texts and the background  
colors are not showing up. I have had similar problem before with  
other sites, and the fix was to declare relative position with z- 
index, or with width.


With this particular layout, the above methods aren't work quite  
well. If width is declared (other than "auto"), the problem get  
solved, howeverI really do not want to declare value for width here  
(it is set to auto so that the background spreads horizontally from  
left to right) because the classes for this two lines are connected  
to application component and use everywhere within the site, so if  
the width declared, it may mess up other page and complicate thing  
for the programmer.


If I declare relative position and z-index, it solves the problem  
nicely, but creating another problem in IE 6, that the background  
colors won't spread to the edge of the right side. I figure I can  
declare width just for IE 6 to counteract, but then it goes back to  
square again because I tried to avoid declaring width to begin with.



Here is the code and the filename for the style sheet is  
"multiple_bookmarks.css"


div.latest_poster, div.original_poster {
  clear: both;
  padding: 0.3em;
  margin: 0px;
  font-size: small;
  line-height: 25px;
  color: #555;
  width: auto;
  display:block
}


div.latest_poster {
  background-color: #ff9899;
}

div.original_poster {
  background-color: #ffcccb;
}



The site is having a redesign, and the page above is for the new  
layout. The above style sheet is from the existing site that was not  
coded by me , my task is to utilize most of the old codes as much as  
possible and clean up the mess. If you click the "home" from the  
above page, it will bring you to actual site that has more bookmark  
listings, and the problem I am having seemed to be affecting mostly  
the first bookmark listing.



Any help greatly appreciated

tee





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Re: [WSG] Standards War - HTML 5 vs XHTML 2.0

[David Dorward]

On Sat, Jan 27, 2007 at 03:30:46PM +, Duncan Stigwood wrote:
>What impact does this have on people who have just made the
>transistion to xHTML 1 like me?

Not a lot. XHTML 1 is pretty pointless for authoring webpages in[1]
(its more useful for other things such as ATOM documents), and the
(previously mentioned) changes in XHTML 2 are so major that the
upgrade path from XHTML 1 was never going to be significantly easier
then from HTML 4.01.

I believe there is an HTML 5 as XML spec somewhere.

>I'm an avid supporter of the web standards and have been guiding many
>in the ways of xHTML and validating... but it seems the issue is
>becoming ever more complicated, rather than clearer, as time goes by.

More complicated? Well, using multiple namespaces has always been
complicated, but each namespace you add allows you to do more
things. If you don't need to do them, then don't use that
namespace. If you do need to do them then "complication" is probably a
better state of affairs then "you can't".

As for HTML 5, well, it does more stuff, so its bigger, and therefore
more complicated. It also disambiguates a bunch of stuff in HTML 4, so
in some ways it is simpler too.

>Personally I feel like despite my best efforts to be a good web
>designer, its becoming ever more troublesome and I'm finding
>myself spending more time trying to keep on the ball than
>actually working and earning a living.

With all[2] the new standards you basically have three choices:

(1) Wait until they are finished and implemented then decide if they
add something useful to you. Reading the occasional spec is not a lot
of work, and you can usually recognise something as being outside the
realm of what you need to know within a couple fo paragraphs.

(2) Join in the development process. This is rather more work, but you
may be able to influence the direction of the spec for the better.



[1] Appendix C, oh the pain.

[2] So that's SVG, MathML, HTML 5 and XHTML 2 as far as current/recent
significant developmentss are concerned. That's 4 major specs, none of
which are well supported yet, and those which are finished have been
available for over a year - it isn't like there's a rush between their
release and their being something useful to learn.

-- 
David Dorward  http://dorward.me.uk



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Re: [WSG] IE layout problem

[Christian Montoya]

On 1/27/07, Vladislav Gorodetskiy <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

Hi there,

My layout is :
   _
||   ||
||   ||
| sidebar |   |  main  |
||   ||
|___|   ||

There is a big div .wrapper who contains .sidebar and .main divs. sidebar is
left-floated and main is right-floated
I have a 100%-width table in .main div
In firefox everything works fine but in IE table becomes 100% of body but
not 100% of .main...


Why does the table have 100% width? Why not auto width? If you are
explicitly applying a width of 100% to the table, in the markup or the
CSS, take it away.

--
--
Christian Montoya
christianmontoya.net .. designtocss.com


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Re: [WSG] Standards War - HTML 5 vs XHTML 2.0

[Christian Montoya]

On 1/27/07, Duncan Stigwood <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

What impact does this have on people who have just made the transistion to
xHTML 1 like me?

I'm an avid supporter of the web standards and have been guiding many in the
ways of xHTML and validating... but it seems the issue is becoming ever more
complicated, rather than clearer, as time goes by.

Rather than having one standard to follow, there seems to be more and more
"standards".  Personally I feel like despite my best efforts to be a good
web designer, its becoming ever more troublesome and I'm finding myself
spending more time trying to keep on the ball than actually working and
earning a living.


People have gone through what you went through and many of them have
done the same thing: go back to HTML 4.01. Let's be honest... by the
time XHTML 2.0 becomes a reality we probably still won't have
universal browser support for XHTML rendering. It's possible to serve
XHTML to compliant browsers and HTML to IE, but there aren't any real
benefits from using XHTML. XHTML is not for day to day web design that
you hand over to your tech-illiterate clients and when you are serving
it as text/html you are just writing XHTML that looks like HTML 4.01
to the browser.

You could keep serving XHTML 1.0 websites and you would probably never
see any negative consequences come from it, but someway along the road
we'll have an updated version of HTML with new tags to learn and a
totally new implementation of XHTML where we will have to learn
everything all over again. It is a disappointing situation right now
but at least there is work being done on all fronts.

My $0.02: I'm looking forward to HTML 5 more.

--
--
Christian Montoya
christianmontoya.net .. designtocss.com


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Re: [WSG] Standards War - HTML 5 vs XHTML 2.0

[Duncan Stigwood]

What impact does this have on people who have just made the transistion to
xHTML 1 like me?

I'm an avid supporter of the web standards and have been guiding many in the
ways of xHTML and validating... but it seems the issue is becoming ever more
complicated, rather than clearer, as time goes by.

Rather than having one standard to follow, there seems to be more and more
"standards".  Personally I feel like despite my best efforts to be a good
web designer, its becoming ever more troublesome and I'm finding myself
spending more time trying to keep on the ball than actually working and
earning a living.


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Re: [WSG] IE layout problem

[Dwain Alford]

can you float the table without the main div?
are you using the table for layout inside the main div or does it have
tabular data?
a url would be most helpful.

dwain

On 1/27/07, Vladislav Gorodetskiy <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:


Hi there,

My layout is :
   _
||   ||
||   ||
| sidebar |   |  main  |
||   ||
|___|   ||

There is a big div .wrapper who contains .sidebar and .main divs. sidebar
is left-floated and main is right-floated
I have a 100%-width table in .main div
In firefox everything works fine but in IE table becomes 100% of body but
not 100% of .main...
Can you help me?

--
Love and Light,
Vladislav.
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--
dwain alford
p.o. box 145
winfield, alabama  35594
u.s.a.

tele:  205.487.2570
cell:  205.495.5619


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[WSG] IE layout problem

[Vladislav Gorodetskiy]

Hi there,

My layout is :
   _
||   ||
||   ||
| sidebar |   |  main  |
||   ||
|___|   ||

There is a big div .wrapper who contains .sidebar and .main divs. sidebar is
left-floated and main is right-floated
I have a 100%-width table in .main div
In firefox everything works fine but in IE table becomes 100% of body but
not 100% of .main...
Can you help me?

--
Love and Light,
Vladislav.


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Re: [WSG] Standards War - HTML 5 vs XHTML 2.0

[Vladislav Gorodetskiy]

Nice writeup David.
I realize that W3C have big plans but both XHTML2 and HTML5 but they're
'working drafts' for more than 5 years...
Personally, I think if HTML5 will be released in 3-4 years it will be very
good. As for XHTML2 I think it'll take more than 5 years more...
It makes me mad...

2007/1/27, liorean <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>:


On 1/27/07, Paul Ross <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> Is this a fork in the specs road or a "standards war" in the making? It
> would be great to bounce this off the WSG cogniscienti and help me (and
> maybe others?) get a grasp of what is going on here.

W3C went too far in their ambitions with XHTML2. They decided to throw
away the good with the bad and make a single, huge change to HTML
(including a full replacement of the SGML/Tagsoup foundation by XML
with draconian error handling) that is in many ways incompatible with
current HTML. The result is a too time consuming process to produce a
specification of a language that is so different that none of the
current user agents for HTML, whether browsers, editors, spiders etc.
can add it's features without major changes. XHTML2 if it were to get
finished today it would be DOA as there's not a single browser and to
my knowledge no editing tools that even considers supporting it at the
moment. The fact that it's still a WD and nowhere near becoming a
standard right now indeed makes it a bad idea for implementors
currently. But in a future with browser and editor support for generic
XML and custom XML applications that is much stronger than the current
situation, XHTML2 might eventually displace HTML. You must understand,
XHTML2 is a different language than HTML, it will compete with HTML -
not a specific version of HTML such as HTML5 or HTML4.01, but HTML as
a sloppy error recovered document language in general - as well as
with XHTML for filling the same role, with the forced draconian error
handling of XML and with different semantics from HTML/XHTML.

HTML5 on the other hand is developed in an open process supported by
the browser makers themselves (except Microsoft) and is meant to be an
evolution of HTML rather than a replacement. It doesn't require major
changes, it only adds on top of the current HTML standard. It tries to
standardise things that were never standardised before such as parser
error recovery. Parts of it are already implemented in several
browsers.

XHTML2 and HTML5 are not at the moment competitors. XHTML2 isn't on
the horizon yet, but HTML5 is in sight. If anything, what's happening
is that HTML5 will succeed HTML4.01 as the current HTML standard in a
few years. When mature enough, XHTML2 may become an alternative to the
then current HTML, whichever version that is. But XHTML2 has always
been a whole new technology trying to replace HTML. HTML5 is instead
an evolution, an upgrade, of an aging HTML specification.

Oh, and HTML5 will probably become a W3C specification, if HTML WG and
WhatWG cooperation works out:
http://www.w3.org/2006/11/HTML-WG-charter.html>
--
David "liorean" Andersson


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--
Love and Light,
Vladislav.


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Re: [WSG] Standards War - HTML 5 vs XHTML 2.0

[liorean]

On 1/27/07, Paul Ross <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

Is this a fork in the specs road or a "standards war" in the making? It
would be great to bounce this off the WSG cogniscienti and help me (and
maybe others?) get a grasp of what is going on here.


W3C went too far in their ambitions with XHTML2. They decided to throw
away the good with the bad and make a single, huge change to HTML
(including a full replacement of the SGML/Tagsoup foundation by XML
with draconian error handling) that is in many ways incompatible with
current HTML. The result is a too time consuming process to produce a
specification of a language that is so different that none of the
current user agents for HTML, whether browsers, editors, spiders etc.
can add it's features without major changes. XHTML2 if it were to get
finished today it would be DOA as there's not a single browser and to
my knowledge no editing tools that even considers supporting it at the
moment. The fact that it's still a WD and nowhere near becoming a
standard right now indeed makes it a bad idea for implementors
currently. But in a future with browser and editor support for generic
XML and custom XML applications that is much stronger than the current
situation, XHTML2 might eventually displace HTML. You must understand,
XHTML2 is a different language than HTML, it will compete with HTML -
not a specific version of HTML such as HTML5 or HTML4.01, but HTML as
a sloppy error recovered document language in general - as well as
with XHTML for filling the same role, with the forced draconian error
handling of XML and with different semantics from HTML/XHTML.

HTML5 on the other hand is developed in an open process supported by
the browser makers themselves (except Microsoft) and is meant to be an
evolution of HTML rather than a replacement. It doesn't require major
changes, it only adds on top of the current HTML standard. It tries to
standardise things that were never standardised before such as parser
error recovery. Parts of it are already implemented in several
browsers.

XHTML2 and HTML5 are not at the moment competitors. XHTML2 isn't on
the horizon yet, but HTML5 is in sight. If anything, what's happening
is that HTML5 will succeed HTML4.01 as the current HTML standard in a
few years. When mature enough, XHTML2 may become an alternative to the
then current HTML, whichever version that is. But XHTML2 has always
been a whole new technology trying to replace HTML. HTML5 is instead
an evolution, an upgrade, of an aging HTML specification.

Oh, and HTML5 will probably become a W3C specification, if HTML WG and
WhatWG cooperation works out:
http://www.w3.org/2006/11/HTML-WG-charter.html>
--
David "liorean" Andersson


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Re: [WSG] Safari - Drop down menu over a flash movie

[al morris]

Hi Mick,

Two things you might want to test:

Using z-index to make sure the menu is above the flash movie.
Using background images on the menu with the fast
rollovertechique
to avoid image flicker in IE.

Al

On 1/27/07, Micky Hulse <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:


Hi al. :)

al morris wrote:
> If the issue is the menu appearing behind flash, you can add param
> mode='transparent' on the flash movie and it will sit behind the menu.

And the point I have been trying to make is that a wmode of opaque works
way better than transparent.

Safari has issues, that is for sure...

Not to beat a dead horse, but... I am still wondering why one of my
sites that has suckerfish over flash and it works great with no probs
until the flash animation is done...

iBook g4 using OS 10.4 and Safari 2.0.4(419.3)

What caused the sub-menu items to work normally during the animation,
but then act funky when all animation stopped?

Whatever the case may be, anyone know if Safari plans to fix this bug in
a future version? Links?

Cheers,
Micky


--
  Wishlist: 
Switch: 
  BCC?: 
My: 


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Re: [WSG] Standards War - HTML 5 vs XHTML 2.0

[David Dorward]

On Sat, Jan 27, 2007 at 08:09:40PM +1100, Paul Ross wrote:

>What I don't get is the HTML 5 (Web Applications 1.0) seems to be a
>competing standard to those proposed by the W3C.

A couple of useful bits of reading are:

  http://whatwg.org/ (the very last section on the homepage)

and

  http://dig.csail.mit.edu/breadcrumbs/node/166

-- 
David Dorward  http://dorward.me.uk



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Re: [WSG] Standards War - HTML 5 vs XHTML 2.0

[Vladislav Gorodetskiy]

Well, there is a big difference between XHTML & HTML, so, I think both XHTML
2.0 and HTML 5 will be widely used.
Personally, I don't think that W3C will make something like 'standards
war'...

2007/1/27, Paul Ross <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>:


I was there at the WSG Sydney meeting last Thursday and was very
interested to hear Lachlan Hunt ("the tallest WSG member" according to Russ)
talking about the "Future of HTML". Here's where I have to admit I must have
been living under a stone for a while because I'd never heard of HTML 5
until that evening and talking to some of the folks after the meeting they
hadn't either. Lachlan's talk raised a lot of questions (which I wished I'd
asked at the meeting but felt like a noob at the time). I've done some
research online since but the archives of this list seem to have more
knowledgable people on the subject.

What I don't get is the HTML 5 (Web Applications 1.0) seems to be a
competing standard to those proposed by the W3C. 
Thisarticle for 
example states: "The W3C promotes XHTML
2.0, based on the requirements of a broad vendor base -- not just desktop
browser makers. XHTML 2.0 is seen as a radical step. In contrast, the Web
Hypertext Application Technology Working Group (WHATWG) promotes a set of
incremental specifications, which evolve HTML to add the most immediately
required functionality into the browser. While no standards war has erupted
yet on the scale that brought HTML into the W3C in the first place, these
two organizations are not always in agreement as to where HTML should go".

Is this a fork in the specs road or a "standards war" in the making? It
would be great to bounce this off the WSG cogniscienti and help me (and
maybe others?) get a grasp of what is going on here.

Regards
PAUL ROSS
SkyRocket Design Co
http://www.skyrocket.com.au
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--
Love and Light,
Vladislav.


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[WSG] Standards War - HTML 5 vs XHTML 2.0

[Paul Ross]

I was there at the WSG Sydney meeting last Thursday and was very interested
to hear Lachlan Hunt ("the tallest WSG member" according to Russ) talking
about the "Future of HTML". Here's where I have to admit I must have been
living under a stone for a while because I'd never heard of HTML 5 until
that evening and talking to some of the folks after the meeting they hadn't
either. Lachlan's talk raised a lot of questions (which I wished I'd asked
at the meeting but felt like a noob at the time). I've done some research
online since but the archives of this list seem to have more knowledgable
people on the subject.

What I don't get is the HTML 5 (Web Applications 1.0) seems to be a
competing standard to those proposed by the W3C.
Thisarticle
for example states: "The W3C promotes XHTML
2.0, based on the requirements of a broad vendor base -- not just desktop
browser makers. XHTML 2.0 is seen as a radical step. In contrast, the Web
Hypertext Application Technology Working Group (WHATWG) promotes a set of
incremental specifications, which evolve HTML to add the most immediately
required functionality into the browser. While no standards war has erupted
yet on the scale that brought HTML into the W3C in the first place, these
two organizations are not always in agreement as to where HTML should go".

Is this a fork in the specs road or a "standards war" in the making? It
would be great to bounce this off the WSG cogniscienti and help me (and
maybe others?) get a grasp of what is going on here.

Regards
PAUL ROSS
SkyRocket Design Co
http://www.skyrocket.com.au


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