Re: [WSG] Re: Website Directory Structure - Best Practice

[Richard Czeiger]

Hi Vlad,

In the case of the products - why not simply have a page saying Product X is 
no longer available. Remember I'm not talking about document santity where 
you're not aloud to touch it, but rather the idea that you don't need to 
delete files - which also avoids 404 errors...


Branding - if the companby have a new logo - why not use the names of the 
old image files and put the new logo on them?
Also if the image file is more decorative, colour scheme backgrounds etc... 
I'd probably get rid of that. No harm, no foul. It's more content files that 
I'm thinking of as being more persistent.


Incorrect/out of date information - well to a degree I think a lot of these 
files can be given new life. The Organisation Chart is old? Why not replace 
it with an updated chart?


Business Reasons - sure, I'd say this partiocular example would be worth 
deletion.


I also agree that the friction caused by people can be huge obstacle, but 
isn't that what good information architecture and technical process for?
I just think that if you plann your site well and spend time accounting for 
future possibilities, then there are few (not "no") reasons for deleting 
files.


Just a thought...

R  :o)

- Original Message - 
From: "Vlad Alexander (XStandard)" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>

To: 
Sent: Tuesday, March 21, 2006 2:06 PM
Subject: Re: [WSG] Re: Website Directory Structure - Best Practice


Hi Richard,


Can you please suggest a reason why there would be an
absolute need to delete a file?

That's a good question. Here are some reasons to "absolutely" delete files:

- Legal issues / licensing. Your site may be licensed to use content for a 
period of time and then content needs to be removed. A real life example 
would be an online store that sell 3rd party products. It may use Product X 
images only as long as it sells Product X.


- Branding issues. When a company changes it's logo, slogan, colour scheme, 
etc., Sales and Marketing will want to remove any images with old branding. 
That's the whole point of branding.


- Incorrect/out-of-date information. Informative images can have old pricing 
info, old phone numbers, old organizational charts, old product numbers, 
etc. To reduce confusion, misleading information and errors, old images need 
to be removed.


- Business reasons. You formed a partnership with Company X and it did not 
work out. You probably want to remove any images with both your logos 
together. "I don't think you would want to archive that screw-up!" :-)


So the next logical question is, if none of my current Web pages link to old 
images, then what's the harm in keeping them around if I have extra disk 
space? Well, your Web pages are not the only entry point to your Web site's 
images. For example, go to google.com and click on Images.


Richard, the article Lachlan referred to talks about an ideal world based on 
"frictionless models". Whenever people get involved, you get frictions (in 
more sense than one).


Regards,
-Vlad
http://xstandard.com




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Re: [WSG] Re: Website Directory Structure - Best Practice

[Richard Czeiger]

Hi Mark  :o)

To address some of the points you raised which were all fair points...

In regards to having a document that wasn't linked to, you might want to 
have a documenton your site that was for internal archiving only.
For example, last year's special products or christmas deals which could be 
available to those in the company with access.
Alternatively, it may be for there for storage purposes only, where the link 
to the page is sent via an email, like sometimes do with clients to show 
them refernce material, etc...


That brings to me to content that is 'obsolete' but not useless, like the 
examples above.


Dynamic web sites with regularly updated information - again this seems like 
a nomenclature issue:
For example "Latest Mars News" for NASA, might be better served with havng 
an index page with a linked archive of static URLs, or permalinks for latest 
articles (like "/mars/news/060320.html").
Of all the people who love reems of data, it's hard to imagine NASA happy to 
just delete files when they can archive them.


However, you make some good points and I'm leaning more towards the 'delete 
it only if you absolutely have to' scenario...


R  :o)


- Original Message - 
From: "Mark Harris" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>

To: 
Sent: Tuesday, March 21, 2006 1:40 PM
Subject: Re: [WSG] Re: Website Directory Structure - Best Practice



Richard Czeiger wrote:

Sorry Vlad - Ithink I'm with Lachlan on this one...

Docs can be edited or re-written but if they're obsolete, you don't need 
to delete them - just don't link to them...


Actually, Lachlan said "no URI should be deleted" which everybody has 
taken to mean "no document left behind" or some such. If a document 
becomes obsolete, remove it and redirect the URI to a page that notifies 
the user of the fact and offers a newer version. How many times have you 
used Google and got a 404 because someone had removed the document you 
were coming for?


And why would you have a document on your site that *wasn't* linked to?


Can you please suggest a reason why there would be an absolute need to 
delete a file?


Can you in turn suggest a reason why you would retain a document on a site 
that was unlinked?


BTW: I'm not saying that under no circustances should precious bytes be 
wiped off the grid! But unless there's a strongly powerful reason, I 
would think that there's no need to delete files...


::thinks:: Dynamic website giving regularly updated information on ongoing 
activities? Ohh, look, NASA...


PS: Let's point out that the article Lachlan's referring to was written 
by the guy who invented the web so it's not exactly an unreliable source.



Well, I'm sure Nobel didn't envisage car bombs, either, when he invented 
nitroglycerin. Things change once they're unleashed on the world. 
(although I agree with the venerable Sir Tim on this, and Lachlan of 
course)


But URI != document, necessarily, and an superseded document may be more 
dangerous than not finding anything.


Cheers

mark
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Re: [WSG] Re: Website Directory Structure - Best Practice

[Richard Czeiger]

Sorry Vlad - Ithink I'm with Lachlan on this one...

Docs can be edited or re-written but if they're obsolete, you don't need to 
delete them - just don't link to them...


If there's a conflict in nomenclature, like having a file called "logo.gif" 
for a company logo and you've a logo for one of their products also called 
"logo.gif" then you've got a problem with your naming conventions.


Can you please suggest a reason why there would be an absolute need to 
delete a file?


BTW: I'm not saying that under no circustances should precious bytes be 
wiped off the grid! But unless there's a strongly powerful reason, I would 
think that there's no need to delete files...


R  ;o)

PS: Let's point out that the article Lachlan's referring to was written by 
the guy who invented the web so it's not exactly an unreliable source.


- Original Message - 
From: "Vlad Alexander (XStandard)" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>

To: 
Sent: Tuesday, March 21, 2006 12:38 PM
Subject: Re: [WSG] Re: Website Directory Structure - Best Practice


Lachlan Hunt wrote:

Never delete them!  Since "Cool URIs don't change",
no document should ever be deleted


Lachlan, I'd hate to think that you are giving advice based on an article 
you've read or from the practice of operating a personal blog. So I am going 
to assume that you are basing your advice on years of experience in managing 
large Web sites with hundreds of staff content contributors. So, before we 
all remove the "Delete" button in our content management systems, can you 
please let us know on which projects you have successfully applied the 
principle of "no document should ever be deleted"?


Regards,
-Vlad
http://xstandard.com

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Re: [WSG] Re: Website Directory Structure - Best Practice

[Richard Czeiger]

Call me fastidious, but I like all my file types to be the same in one 
folder. That is, the "styles" folder should have only stylesheets, "images" 
should have only images.
When it comes to Flash I tend to put these in a folder called "media" for 
some reason


R  :o)

--Original Message --

One technique I use is to put all background images in the same folder as 
the css. I only use 'images' folders for actual content images. Ideally 
there won't be any other sort.


Geoff.


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Re: [WSG] Website Directory Structure - Best Practice

[Richard Czeiger]

I think this article pretty much cover it and seems to be the 'best 
practice' method.

http://www.alistapart.com/articles/urls/

This accommodates eliminating the extension - which would please our 
Grandaddy Tim Berners-Lee

http://www.w3.org/Provider/Style/URI

as well as avoids dumping individual files in their own folders - which is 
an inefficient way to do it.


R  :o)

- Original Message - 
From: "Lachlan Hunt" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>

To: 
Sent: Monday, March 20, 2006 11:34 AM
Subject: Re: [WSG] Website Directory Structure - Best Practice



Lea de Groot wrote:
* the page-name.some-technology, in implimentation. I tend to end all my 
pages in html no matter what I am using server side because a) it says 
'webpage' and


Then it adds 5 unnecessary characters to the end of the URI that serve no 
real purpose.  I don't like including the file extension on any URI at all 
and if it wasn't for the annoying IE caching bugs I've experienced when 
leaving extensions of images, CSS and JS (i.e. IE apparently won't cache 
the files at all), I wouldn't include those either.


It's also annoying when changing implementation.  Like when I switched 
from blogger to WordPress.  Blogger used static .html files and gave no 
way to configure links to be written without file extensions, even though 
I had MultiViews turned on. WordPress stores everything in the DB and has 
no file extensions in URIs.


I ended up having to use mod_rewrite to accept .html on the end of any 
article URI so that no existing links/bookmarks wouldn't break.  It would 
have been much less hassle if blogger had let me turn off file extensions 
in the first place.



b) the technology for turning extensions off is flakey and


What's flaky about it?  Apache MultiViews is the easiest way to not 
require file extensions for static files, with the added advantage of 
making content negotiation extremely easy to do.


I find putting a single page per directory inefficient in workflow - it 
has to work on both the developers and the users side!


Yes, I agree with that.

--
Lachlan Hunt
http://lachy.id.au/
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Re: [WSG] Semantic Form - Person's Title

[Richard Czeiger]

Sorry Mickey - didn't mean to knit-pick, but what you're saying is that it 
should look something like this?



   Title
   value="Mr" />Mr
   value="Mrs" />Mrs
   value="Miss" />Ms



Can I get a consensus that this is actually the right way to do it?
It feels right, but I'd like the opinion of my venerable peers  :o)

Now just have to figure out a way to style the legend properly.

Cheers,
Richard

- Original Message - 
From: "Micky Mourelo" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>

To: 
Sent: Friday, March 17, 2006 4:38 AM
Subject: Re: [WSG] Semantic Form - Person's Title


To Richard Czeiger:

That's one of the problems of copy & paste :o) anyway, I thought it
was obvious that my code was just an example, maybe should have
preceeded it with "pseudo-code", but just in case: never leave name=""
in blank and never use a "field" id for a field :op.

This discussion is getting old. Legends are optional from XHTML 1.0 on
and the for attribute is an aid for ie users, so use it since it is
not wrong (maybe just redundant, but not wrong in any way) to use it
at all.
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Re: [WSG] Semantic Form - Person's Title

[Richard Czeiger]

Hi Lachlan - I think this is correct for HTML4.01 but not for XHTML



http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I thought the pipe meant "or" in BNF 
notation...


Also in regards to the IE thing, does it hurt? Does it break validation? 
Does it provide more information (even thgouh its implicit)?


There seem to be no downsides in using this for IE. Yes it's 'broken' as you 
put it, but you simply can't design sites in the real world and not cater to 
IE - it's just not a viable option. It sounds like what you're recommending 
is to ignore a feature that makes forms for useable for 85% of the market 
becuase the technology used by that market doesn't measure up to the 
standard. Would you really impair usability when the cost is a couple of 
extra bytes that does not break code validation anyway?


Just a thought...

R  :o)


- Original Message - 
From: "Lachlan Hunt" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>

To: 
Sent: Wednesday, March 15, 2006 10:38 PM
Subject: Re: [WSG] Semantic Form - Person's Title



Micky Mourelo wrote:

You don't need to set the for and id attributes when the input is within
the label because the association is implicit.


Not on IE. IE won't make the label clickable unless it is associated
through "for".


Of course not in IE, but IE is broken and I consider that acceptable 
graceful degradation.



The legend is a required child of fieldset.


Specwise the DTD seems to say it is optional,


Really?  Let's see:

group -->


Looks like it's required to me and it's the same in both Strict and 
Transitional DTDs.



and the validator agrees.


I'd like to see your test case that demonstrates that.

--
Lachlan Hunt
http://lachy.id.au/

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Re: [WSG] Semantic Form - Person's Title

[Richard Czeiger]

Ummm, mickey - just spotted the fact that you have multiple identical 
IDs

How does this work? Certainly won't validate..

R  :o)

- Original Message - 
From: "Micky Mourelo" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>

To: 
Sent: Wednesday, March 15, 2006 8:08 PM
Subject: Re: [WSG] Semantic Form - Person's Title


Hi Richard,

I looked at your example. You need not use a fieldset for every
input. All you have to do is put the input inside the label, set the
label to block and a margin-left to the input; and save the fieldset
for a real field set. As for the title (Mr, Ms. etc) the thing to do
would be:

Title
Mr.Ms.


In this case you would set the labels to inline.

But in reality I would recommend either forgetting about the legend
(p?), almost impossible to style, or to position:absolute it; not that
problematic.
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[WSG] Semantic Form - Person's Title

[Richard Czeiger]

Hi all  :o)
 
Here's how I'd normally mark up a basic form element:
 
    Your 
Name    
 
 
Using CSS, I can get it to look nice with the label on the left and the 
input box on the right, mimicking a two column table.
Something like this...
http://www.courtappearances.com.au/listedForm.php
 
I'd like to have a similar approach to and form element consisting of, say, 
three radio buttons.
Let's call it the element "Title" with the radio options as "Mr, Mrs and 
Miss".
It should look like this:
 
Title        
 o 
Mr o Mrs o Miss
 
What would the mark up be and how would you do the CSS?
Here we have the need for three labels, don't we? How would you get the 
word "Title" to display? A legend tag?
 
Any thoughts?
 
Cheers,
Richard   :o)

Re: [WSG] Usability issue with form help

[Richard Czeiger]

This may sound silly but what about the tabindex attribute?
AFAIK it's still part of the standard and should do what you're after...

R  :o)

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Re: [WSG] Absolute Positioning-A Naive Question (Maybe)

[Richard Czeiger]

Here's a potentially naive response ... does it matter?

As long as the (x)html is semantically marked up, does the rationale behind 
your css code make a difference (taking into account the fact that it should 
look the same on all browsers)?


The ONLY function of css is the control of the visual treatment of content. 
The use of hacks are an annoyance, but they're only implemented due to the 
failure of browsers to comply with the standards. The various layout options 
are again designed purely to aid you in getting your site to look the way 
you want it to.


Our way around such problems and the method we use to layout pages visually 
is the only thing that counts - if your css is messy or ugly or uses float 
as opposed to absolute position, who cares? The html is clean and semantic 
and the site looks the way you want it to. Isn't that what counts?


Just a thought...
R   ;o)

- Original Message - 
From: "Paula Petrik" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>

To: 
Sent: Tuesday, March 14, 2006 1:35 PM
Subject: [WSG] Absolute Positioning-A Naive Question (Maybe)


When I read the W3C specs (not the most riveting exercise on the  planet), 
it seems that the developers emphasize absolute positioning.  For example, 
they describe using floats to float small bits of text  or images. It 
seems, however, that floats have become the order of  the day. Rather than 
small bits, whole parts of designs are floated  about. Was this the W3C's 
intent? Or, have floats become the modern  equivalent of tables? Is there 
some reason why absolute positioning  has fallen by the wayside? 
CSS-Discuss's wiki describes absolute  positioning as capable of "simple 
designs"; yet, a significant  proportion of csszengarden designs are 
absolutely positioned, and I  wouldn't term them simple. Just wondering 
what the current wisdom is  on this issue.

Best,
Paula

Paula Petrik
Professor
Department of History & Art History
Associate Director
Center for History & New Media
George Mason University
http://www.archiva.net





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Re: [WSG] Check boxes ticked (UK Law)

[Richard Czeiger]

I agree - I think the areas of "Web Standards" and "Best Practices" should 
go side by side.
If one country has decided to actually legislate on something then it's at 
least worth discussing.


:o)

R


- Original Message - 
From: "Jixor - Stephen I" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>

To: 
Sent: Tuesday, January 31, 2006 11:38 AM
Subject: Re: [WSG] Check boxes ticked (UK Law)



I believe this question would fall within the scope of this group.

Anyway I would be very interested to know the answer to this, with a link 
to the related legislation.


Giles Clark wrote:


Paul,
 I think you are way off topic here. If you want to contact me directly 
I'd be happy to help

 [EMAIL PROTECTED] 

-Original Message-
*From:* [EMAIL PROTECTED]
[mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Behalf Of *Paul Collins
*Sent:* 30 January 2006 15:33
*To:* wsg@webstandardsgroup.org
*Subject:* [WSG] Check boxes ticked (UK Law)

Hello all
 I recall reading somewhere a while back that UK law states you
can't have a check box ticked on a form
 EG - "untick this box if you don't want to receive emails" would
be illegal for a UK site. Could anyone tell me if I'm right or wrong 
and if possible give me

some credible links to back this up?

Thanks heaps,
Paul Collins


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Re: [WSG] webpatterns and patternquiz

[Richard Czeiger]

Hey John,

I think you're right on both counts...
Yes, in order for this to be effective the more professionals who 
contribute, the better it will be.
And yes, absolutely, it's not about stating "this is the ONLY way you can do 
this" but presenting a set of choices.


I look forward to seeing the next stage  ;o)

R


- Original Message - 
From: "John Allsopp" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>

To: 
Sent: Tuesday, December 20, 2005 11:59 AM
Subject: Re: [WSG] webpatterns and patternquiz


Richard,


I don't know, Sam...

I mean, we're not forcing someone to use these patterns. But let's  face 
it, they're patterns because lots of people use them.




exactly. These patterns exist already. Its not about saying "you
should do these things in this way" rather "over time, when solving
this kind of problem, the following conventions have emerged"


For example:

previous 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 next

look familiar?
Google and almost every multi-page set of results uses this. I'd  call it 
a convention. We're using the word 'pattern'.



very nice example - there are actually two patterns here - a
"navigation strategy" (how to allow users to conceive of and move
around a set of information) and apage architecture pattern, how to
present that strategy to the users. There might even be an
interaction pattern lurking in there too if you look closely enough.


What's the best way to mark this up?
Well, I'd hazard a quess that this was an ordered list.
But then there's those two at the beginning and end
How are they best semantically marked up?
And what CSS is best used to effectively display them?


at this point, we get into suggested solutions. There is often going
to be more than one common solution, (note again this is about
capturing current practice, rather than dictating the "one true
way"). The pattern captures these solutions, and discusses the pros
and cons of using them. The developer still needs to make a choice in
the context of their project, and then implement the pattern.



What I'm saying is that instead of:
a. trying to figure it out for yourself (which at the VERY best is  time 
consuming), or

b. Cut'n'pasting someone else's dodgey table-based code

... you could go to this site and, knowing that this is the Best  Practice 
method, use that bit of code.


I'd just pluralize Best Practices, and I think you've got  agreat
example here

Hang on! Oh yeah, the standards community has already started doing 
something like this with hCard via MicroFormats, right?

Thing is, I think the idea could be applied to more patterns.


Yes, microformats are certainly patterns - what I term (for now) data
patterns, by and large. WebPatterns are more general than µf, in part
because the µf crew have specifically decided to focus on one aspect
of patterns, at least for now.

You never know, it might end continually re-occurring debates on  mailing 
lists (like those I mentioned in my first post).


or at least move them to a wiki :-)

Thanks for the great ideas

j





John Allsopp

style master :: css editor :: http://westciv.com/style_master
support forum ::  http://support.westciv.com
blog :: dog or higher :: http://blogs.westciv.com/dog_or_higher

Web Essentials web development conference http://we05.com


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Re: [WSG] webpatterns and patternquiz

[Richard Czeiger]

I don't know, Sam...

I mean, we're not forcing someone to use these patterns. But let's face it, 
they're patterns because lots of people use them.

For example:

previous 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 next

look familiar?
Google and almost every multi-page set of results uses this. I'd call it a 
convention. We're using the word 'pattern'.


What's the best way to mark this up?
Well, I'd hazard a quess that this was an ordered list.
But then there's those two at the beginning and end
How are they best semantically marked up?
And what CSS is best used to effectively display them?

What I'm saying is that instead of:
a. trying to figure it out for yourself (which at the VERY best is time 
consuming), or

b. Cut'n'pasting someone else's dodgey table-based code

... you could go to this site and, knowing that this is the Best Practice 
method, use that bit of code.


Hang on! Oh yeah, the standards community has already started doing 
something like this with hCard via MicroFormats, right?

Thing is, I think the idea could be applied to more patterns.

You never know, it might end continually re-occurring debates on mailing 
lists (like those I mentioned in my first post).



- Original Message - 
From: "Samuel Richardson" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>

To: 
Sent: Monday, December 19, 2005 3:01 PM
Subject: Re: [WSG] webpatterns and patternquiz


I think you'll find their are too many variables in a website to do this 
easily. Plus you'll never convince designers to stick to those set layouts 
:D 



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Re: [WSG] webpatterns and patternquiz

[Richard Czeiger]

Actually, it would be great if we could have something like this which would 
form a 'toolkit' of sorts where we can take 'developer-authorised' code 
snippets and put them in our pages. Such as finally having a collection of 
code so we don't have to ask: "What's the most semantic and valid way of 
marking up addresses?" and such.


This would save a lot of time, especially for CSS learners / 
new-to-standards folk.


Semantically marked up Photo Gallery? Go to the Photo Gallery section and 
choose from sevral layouts, all given the thumbs up by CSS Samurais and such 
out there.


Best way to do breadcrumbs (once and for all)? Sure check out the Navigation 
section.


etc...

What do you think?
R

- Original Message - 
From: "John Allsopp" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>

To: 
Sent: Monday, December 19, 2005 2:34 PM
Subject: [WSG] webpatterns and patternquiz


Hi all,

Some of you might have read my recent article, WebPatterns and
WebSemantics

http://westciv.typepad.com/dog_or_higher/2005/11/webpatterns_and.html

In a nutshell, a pattern is a "a problem which occurs over and over
again … and … the core of the solution to that problem". When we
build sites, unconsciously we use patterns all the time - it's just
very little work has been done trying to capture and document them.
That's what I've started http://webpatterns.org to do.

The first big step here is the "PatternQuiz"

http://webpatterns.org/wordpress/?p=4

the aim of which is to explore existing patterns in web development.
I've started with site level patterns.

I'm really interested in the thoughts of all developers about the
patterns which we use, so if you have a moment please come along, and
contribute your thoughts and experience

john

John Allsopp

style master :: css editor :: http://westciv.com/style_master
support forum ::  http://support.westciv.com
blog :: dog or higher :: http://blogs.westciv.com/dog_or_higher

Web Essentials web development conference http://we05.com


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Re: [WSG] webpatterns and patternquiz

[Richard Czeiger]

Hey John   :o)

Martijn van Welie's been hacking away at something like this for a bit - 
check it out  :o)

http://www.welie.com/patterns/index.html

R

- Original Message - 
From: "John Allsopp" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>

To: 
Sent: Monday, December 19, 2005 2:34 PM
Subject: [WSG] webpatterns and patternquiz


Hi all,

Some of you might have read my recent article, WebPatterns and
WebSemantics

http://westciv.typepad.com/dog_or_higher/2005/11/webpatterns_and.html

In a nutshell, a pattern is a "a problem which occurs over and over
again … and … the core of the solution to that problem". When we
build sites, unconsciously we use patterns all the time - it's just
very little work has been done trying to capture and document them.
That's what I've started http://webpatterns.org to do.

The first big step here is the "PatternQuiz"

http://webpatterns.org/wordpress/?p=4

the aim of which is to explore existing patterns in web development.
I've started with site level patterns.

I'm really interested in the thoughts of all developers about the
patterns which we use, so if you have a moment please come along, and
contribute your thoughts and experience

john

John Allsopp

style master :: css editor :: http://westciv.com/style_master
support forum ::  http://support.westciv.com
blog :: dog or higher :: http://blogs.westciv.com/dog_or_higher

Web Essentials web development conference http://we05.com


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Re: [WSG] Justify this

[Richard Czeiger]

In answer to your actual original question...

Wouldn't it just involve setting the paragraphs container to

padding: 0 3em; text-align: center;

and then in the paragraph have something like

text-align: justify;

where 3em is the space on either side of the para to make it look centred.


div { padding: 0 3em; text-align: center; }
p { text-align: justify; }



This is just some text. This is just some text. This is just some text. 
This is just some text. This is just some text. This is just some text. This 
is just some text. This is just some text. This is just some text. This is 
just some text. This is just some text. This is just some text. This is just 
some text. This is just some text. This is just some text. This is just some 
text. This is just some text. This is just some text. This is just some 
text. This is just some text. This is just some text. 



R  :o)

- Original Message - 
From: "Herrod, Lisa" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>

To: "'Joshua Street '" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>; 
Sent: Thursday, December 15, 2005 3:16 PM
Subject: RE: [WSG] Justify this



We're talking about paragraphs of text here.

It's harder to read, presents 'rivers of white' running through the text 
as

lines stretch and contract to fit the line. it's unnatural. it's probably
unaustralian somewhere too :)

some links:

Rivers of white:
http://www.usability.com.au/resources/cognitive.cfm

More (where roger is referenced)
http://www.rnib.org.uk/xpedio/groups/public/documents/publicwebsite/public_t
extjustify.hcsp


lisa

-Original Message-
From: Joshua Street
To: wsg@webstandardsgroup.org
Sent: 15/12/05 15:07
Subject: Re: [WSG] Justify this

Really? Why not?

I wouldn't have said that of justified text, but maybe my response is
an aesthetic one rather than a conscious approach to readability. Is
it something to do with not being able to find the line you were on at
the end/beginning as easily?

(And if we're going to go down this path, what of non-fixed-width
sites, justified or not?)

Not attacking, just... curious. Because I think justified text LOOKS
nicer (n.b. not neccessarily more readable... just more enjoyable to
read.)

Josh

On 12/15/05, Herrod, Lisa <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

Justified text really isn't a good idea in terms of

usability/readability.


Maybe there was a conscious effort not to support it :)



-Original Message-
From: Paul Noone
To: wsg@webstandardsgroup.org
Sent: 15/12/05 14:49
Subject: RE: [WSG] Justify this

Hi Lachlan,

Thanks for that but I was actually wanting to center align justified
text
for a particular purpose. Evidently my experiment is invalid.

Thanks anyway.

--
Paul A Noone
Webmaster, ASHM
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
-Original Message-
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
[mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
On Behalf Of Lachlan Hunt
Sent: Thursday, 15 December 2005 2:35 PM
To: wsg@webstandardsgroup.org
Subject: Re: [WSG] Justify this

Paul Noone wrote:
> Hopefully a quick question, I hoope, as the W3C specs are no help on
> this one.

No, they are usually always helpful but you need to know what you're
looking
for.

> I want to centre align text and justify it at the same time. I've
> applied the following mark-up which, surprisingly, does the trick.

But


> can justify be applied as an optional extra parameter, or does this
> just work through browser quirks?
>
> text-align: center justify;

If that does anything at all, it's a browser bug.  That property

should

be
ignored by a conforming browser.  Centred and justified text are
mutually
exclusive options and it makes little sense to combine them like that.
However, I'm going to assume you're looking for a way to centre the

box,

but
have the text justified within.  In which case, this should do the
trick:

p { width: 50%; margin: 0 auto; text-align: justify; }

Just use an appropriate selector and width for your needs.

--
Lachlan Hunt
http://lachy.id.au/

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--
Joshua Street

http://www.joahua.com/
+61 (0) 425 808 469
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Re: [WSG] New logo scheme was talking points for standards

[Richard Czeiger]

Patrick's got a good point ... but isn't this conversation just about at its 
end?

We seem to have two camps: those for and those against.
How much more do we need to talk about this stuff???

R

- Original Message - 
From: "Patrick H. Lauke" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>

To: 
Sent: Wednesday, December 07, 2005 1:11 PM
Subject: Re: [WSG] New logo scheme was talking points for standards



Lea de Groot wrote:


http://www.energyrating.gov.au/con3.html
Ugly stickers; Very effective program.


From http://www.energyrating.gov.au/background.html

"Manufacturers who produce / import appliances for the Australian market 
are required to submit their products to an approved testing agency."


So, it is effective because:

- it's *enforced* (by law, I'll assume) by the government
- there are *approved* testing agencies

Once those two things are in place on the net, we can discuss stickers and 
badges...


--
Patrick H. Lauke
__
re·dux (adj.): brought back; returned. used postpositively
[latin : re-, re- + dux, leader; see duke.]
www.splintered.co.uk | www.photographia.co.uk
http://redux.deviantart.com
__
Web Standards Project (WaSP) Accessibility Task Force
http://webstandards.org/
__
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Re: [WSG] starting ordered lists from a number other than 1

[Richard Czeiger]

There's also the idea that legal documents are often split into sections 
which continue numbering but are infact separate documents (addendums, 
etc...) .


At the moment, legal docs can't be semantically marked-up (at least in OZ) 
because:


1. any electonic version of a legal document MUST replicate the numbering 
and ordering EXACTLY.
2. current HTML/XHTML list mark-up/styling is not flexible enough to 
accomplish this.


The 'start' attribute and the 'value' attribute in s would be amazingly 
helpful for this.
Of course, the obvious solution is to teach bl**dy lawyers how to 
meaningfully put together a document but they can't even write in plain 
English let alone manage something as complex as nested lists!


;oP

On a more serious note, if someone can put together a MicroFormat that 
solves this problem, they'll go down in the Web Geek Hall of Fame or 
something. (if you do manage it though, please let me know!)


R 



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Re: [WSG] css instead of JS(ajax)

[Richard Czeiger]

This seems to be a great way to illustrate one of the key points of the 
whole standards compliant, semantic web concept.


Basically,

   XHTML - Content (what it says)
   CSS - Form (what it looks like)
   JavaScript/DOM - Behaviour (what happens when I do this ...)

The Fisheye example looks like a perfect fit for JavaScript.
Again, why would you try do this in anything but JavaScript?

The page works when JS is turned off, so that's a good thing
The ONLY thing I'd recommend is plugging in some DOM to access the an ID 
that you give to the DIVs instead of those proprietary attributes.


R  :o)


- Original Message - 
From: "Marko Mihelcic - founder of mcville.net 
(http.//www.mcville.net)|(http://board.mcville.net)" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>

To: 
Sent: Wednesday, November 09, 2005 6:40 AM
Subject: Re: [WSG] css instead of JS(ajax)


My point exactly why not use JS ?

2005/11/8, Wayne Douglas <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>:

That has about as much to do with AJAX as my mother does.

Whats wrong with using the fisheye widget? Dojo code is standards 
compliant,
effiecient JS. Why would you try to do something like that in _pure_ CSS? 
If

your going to do that you might as well try to do it in plain text aswell.

HTH

w




On 11/8/05, Jad Madi <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> Hi,
> any idea if it's possible to create menu like this one pure css without 
> JS

?
>
>
http://dojotoolkit.org/~alex/dojo/trunk/demos/widget/Fisheye.html
>
>
> if yes, please shot a kickstart
> --
> Regards
> Jad madi
> Blog
> http://EasyHTTP.com/jad/
> Web standards Planet
> http://W3planet.net/
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Re: [WSG] Text choices on our own sites

[Richard Czeiger]

Good point, Andy.

However, I think there actually *is* a benchmark we can use as a guide to 
work from in terms of the user's technical ability. I'd start by looking at 
'default behaviour'. The ability to operate a machine/software using ONLY 
its default settings.


For the web, this would be a level above "What is a Link" and below "'How do 
I increase/decrease text size".


Assuming users know what's on the context menu is above the scope of this 
(that's why so many sites put instructions like "right-click and select 
'save target as' " in their pages). Assuming the User knows how to clear 
their cache or set their Home Page is also above this level, as this 
requires the user to go into the 'options' available for the software. The 
second they start to get 'under the hood' of the software is when they start 
to become more advanced.


You're example of screen readers' users setting the Title attribute is not 
so much a fault in page design or standards but rather (at best) a 
mis-calculation by the software developers on the importance of one of their 
features or (at worst) a dramatic over-site in terms of standards support by 
the software developers.


Hope I'm making sense, here and I know it's a slippery slope, but hey ...
That's why they pay us the big bucks, right?

.. Right?

Anyone?

R   :oP


- Original Message - 
From: "Andy Kirkwood | Motive" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>

To: 
Sent: Monday, October 31, 2005 2:00 PM
Subject: Re: [WSG] Text choices on our own sites



Hi Richard,

To play the devil's advocate...

Certainly humanist developers aim to remove the barriers that technology 
might place between users and content. However, difficulty arises when 
determining what constitutes 'technical' literacy. This could range from 
'What's a link' through to 'How do I increase/decrease text size'. Even 
many of the 'hooks' put into content markup to make it more accessible are 
not used by a screen reader unless the user customises the behaviour of 
the software (reading title attributes for one).


The issue of determining prior (technical) knowledge is one of those 
bug-bears like browser statistics. Even though we'd like to, it's 
problematic to generalise. On the other hand, adding an introduction to 
every webpage on how to use the web is equally untenable.


Incidentally, does anyone know of a formal public-school curriculum that 
covers using the web? Such a document/documents might provide an insight 
as to how we (as in society-at-large) currently qualify 'technical 
literacy'.


I think it's important to NOT expect users to know how to do this or even 
be vaguely technically literate.
Doctors, for example, shouldn't have to be IT experts. They fix people not 
machines. It's simply not their job or responsibility to be forced to 
learn the HUGE amount of stuff that as developers we've crammed into our 
head. This doesn't mean they should be penaliseed and not allowed to see 
web sites or interact as freely on the web as the rest of us.


--
Andy Kirkwood | Creative Director

Motive | web.design.integrity
http://www.motive.co.nz
ph: (04) 3 800 800  fx: (04) 970 9693
mob: 021 369 693
93 Rintoul St, Newtown
PO Box 7150, Wellington South, New Zealand
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Re: [WSG] Text choices on our own sites

[Richard Czeiger]

I think it's important to NOT expect users to know how to do this or even be 
vaguely technically literate.
Doctors, for example, shouldn't have to be IT experts. They fix people not 
machines. It's simply not their job or responsibility to be forced to learn 
the HUGE amount of stuff that as developers we've crammed into our head. 
This doesn't mean they should be penaliseed and not allowed to see web sites 
or interact as freely on the web as the rest of us.


Isn't that part of the point of accessibility?
R


- Original Message - 
From: "Lea de Groot" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>

Subject: Re: [WSG] Text choices on our own sites



Not necessarily - corporately, some IT departments will turn off
Javascript pre-emptively for non-trusted sites.
This does not mean that the user will be aware, or understand, this.
:(

warmly,
Lea



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Re: [WSG] Text choices on our own sites

[Richard Czeiger]

Also - the Nokia browser on my phone doesn't support JavaScript. And even if 
it did, where the heck would I change the settings?


Device independence is a big part of Accessibility, IMHO.

R  :o)


- Original Message - 
From: "Donna Maurer" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>

To: 
Sent: Monday, October 31, 2005 12:37 PM
Subject: Re: [WSG] Text choices on our own sites


Organisations can turn javascript off when installing/configuring then 
lock the browser.

I've worked in places where this has happened...

Donna

On 30 Oct 2005 at 19:20, T. R. Valentine wrote:



AFAIK, all browsers have JavaScript turned on by default. If a user
has turned it off, the user certainly ought to know how to undo his
previous action. (If a user has had a friend do it, the user ought to
be able to get the answers from the friend.)


--
Donna Maurer
Maadmob Interaction Design

e: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
work: http://maadmob.com.au/
blog: http://maadmob.net/donna/blog/
AOL IM: maadmob


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Re: [WSG] Text choices on our own sites

[Richard Czeiger]

I think another part of this is also the fact that web development is moving 
towards being a more respected industry and escaping the 'techno-mysticism' 
that surrounded it in the late 90s when we were all meant to be snowboarding 
designers or propellorheads.
Having standards (and using them!) is a way to make Web Development more of 
a serious industry in the same way that having an industry body (like AIMIA) 
adds to our credibility.


On top of of all that, Jan's absolutely right - we ARE professionals and we 
DO care about providing our clients with the best quality work we can - 
otherwise we'd all create web sites in MS word and export them as HTML. Our 
clients demand that we give them the best product and if they don't then 
it's only becuase they don't know the difference. Thing is, they shop around 
and if one developer mentions standards-compliant design in their proposal 
and another one doesn't then any vaguely intelligent client is going to ask 
the other "do YOU write standards-compliant code?"


Hopefully, it will not be something to look out for in the future, but 
rather a base practice - like having a license to drive a taxi.
In the meantime, I think it's still a bit of a selling point, if nothing 
else.


R  :o)



- Original Message - 
From: "Jan Brasna" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>

To: 
Sent: Monday, October 31, 2005 11:01 AM
Subject: Re: [WSG] Text choices on our own sites


I don't think it must be neccessarily a common issue. Many agencies I know 
here mostly don't even mention standards or the particular technologies, 
they're just selling greatly usable, effective and profitable web solutions 
to the clients and since they are professionals and they care the output is 
standards-based as an obvious thing.


--
Jan Brasna aka JohnyB :: www.alphanumeric.cz | www.janbrasna.com
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Re: [WSG] Text choices on our own sites

[Richard Czeiger]

Actually James, I think this is 
more a Usability concern rather than an Accessibility concern.
What you might say instead is: 

 
"I can't view the site on my 
browser and even if I could, the text is samll and I can't change 
it!"
Or 
 
"Why does this site tell me I need 
to have _javascript_ turned on? How do I even do that?"
 
R  :o)
 
 
- Original Message - 
From: James Ellis 

To: wsg@webstandardsgroup.org 
Sent: Monday, October 31, 2005 10:18 AM
Subject: Re: [WSG] Text choices on our own sites
HiEveryone cares about accessibility, both consciously 
and/or subsconsciously."I hate this website, I can't find anything on 
it. I'm going somewhere else" - that's someone caring about 
accessibility.CheersJames
On 10/31/05, Joseph R. B. 
Taylor <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> 
wrote:
As 
  a thought, I wanted to point something out.  No one cares 
  aboutstandards or accessibility but us.  Its our job to 
  care.

Re: [WSG] Avoiding the evil

[Richard Czeiger]

Hey Christian.
Actually I find when reading an 
address (or telling it to someone else) I do pause after certain 
elements:
street, 
suburb, 
state and postcode (these seem to 
go together for my internal voice - NSW 2011 - almost like a license 
plate)
 
Saying the whole address wihout 
pausing wouldn't make sense
 
 
R
 
 
- Original Message - 
From: Christian Montoya 

To: wsg@webstandardsgroup.org 
Sent: Monday, October 10, 2005 3:38 PM
Subject: Re: [WSG] Avoiding the evil 

On 10/9/05, Richard 
Czeiger <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> 
wrote:
OK 
  so someone pointed out that  would be better for poetry 
That was me. 
 
  does a nice job of handling the visual side of things but from ascreen 
  reader's point of view, how do they handle a line break through 
  as opposed to . Do they pause or say "new line"? I 
  think, when all is said and done though that  does seem better 
  for poetry.
Actually, I think I learned in poetry class that most poems are meant 
to be read continuously. In some poems line breaks matter, but it would be up to 
the screen readers to ensure that the structure of a poem was not lost to the 
listener. If you tried to style a poem by e.e. cummings, you would have a 
boatload of   and < br />. Not pretty at all.Glad we 
agree. Back to the topic at hand, why would you pause when reading an address 
aloud? If you tell me your address, do I really care where the line breaks are? 
Read this aloud: 909 anystreetithaca, new yorkDid you stop 
at the line break? Did it matter? My point is that we don't need to make the 
line break obvious to the screen reader. If we want it there for the browser 
that lacks css we would want the < br />. Sometimes line breaks are 
necessary visually, with or without css. Otherwise, the span{display:block;} 
method would work too. I would prefer the < br />. For another 
example of where I use < br />, I sometimes use it in forms, where I want 
line breaks with or without css. > PS: in terms of the 
 element itself - check out what's happening > over here! 
> http://www.w3.org/MarkUp/2004/02/xhtml-rdf.html#div154379976 
The "resource" term looks like a great way to 
make an address semantic.-- - C Montoyardpdesign.com ... liquid.rdpdesign.com ... montoya.rdpdesign.com 

Re: [WSG] Avoiding the evil

[Richard Czeiger]

I dont' know how it works in the big leagues over at the W3C but I imagine 
that there's a fair amount of discussion internally about every single 
little bit they put into their specs.


Also, I have a stong feeling that our little mailing list here actually is a 
significant player into what the W3C does in the future. Certainly we've had 
their key players chat to us online and in person whenever they're in town. 
What we say here must at least make their ears prick up a little


I think the frustration is that we often keep going over the same ground 
without consensus or a formalised way of doing something with the arguements 
we do end up agreeing on.


Actually offering something up to the W3C on these issues (line breaks, 
address, etc...) and say "you guys do a great job, but we think the follow 
section could be clarified and expanded up. If you agree please update the 
spec and put out a note letting everyone know.

Cheers,
WSG"

What do you think?
R  :o)


- Original Message - 
From: "Buddy Quaid" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>

To: 
Sent: Monday, October 10, 2005 1:50 PM
Subject: Re: [WSG] Avoiding the evil 



Peter Firminger wrote:

This thread is a clear case of why non-standards developers laugh at us 
(Web

Standards Zealots) and justifiably say we're irrelevant.

We're arguing over a line break! Forget the context (but a postal or 
street
address is a fine example of the need for a line break in the way most 
(en)

people write out addresses.


I second that. I tried to make a point like this a few threads ago and got 
reamed for it.

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Re: *****SPAM***** Re: [WSG] Placement of company logo

[Richard Czeiger]

Umm  actually you do..

Check out www.courtappearances.com.au to see what I'm talking about.
Here's the CSS for that:
http://www.courtappearances.com.au/styles/style.css

R   :o)


- Original Message - 
From: "Thierry Koblentz" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>

To: 
Sent: Monday, October 10, 2005 1:58 PM
Subject: *SPAM* Re: [WSG] Placement of company logo



Richard Czeiger wrote:

That way you don't get "clear.gif" going in your otherwise
semantically nice mark up  :o)


... but that way you don't get a clickable logo ;)

Thierry | www.TJKDesign.com

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Re: *****SPAM***** Re: [WSG] Placement of company logo

[Richard Czeiger]

I prefer the following IR:


   Company 
Name




in the stylesheet:

#masthead h1 {
   margin: 0px; padding: 0px;
}

a {
   width: Xpx; height: Ypx; overflow: hidden;
   margin: 0px; padding: 0px; padding-top: Xpx; background: transparent 
url(images/logo.gif) no-repeat top left;

}


That way you don't get "clear.gif" going in your otherwise semantically nice 
mark up  :o)

R


- Original Message - 
From: "Thierry Koblentz" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>

To: 
Sent: Monday, October 10, 2005 1:30 PM
Subject: *SPAM* Re: [WSG] Placement of company logo



Richard Czeiger wrote:

Doing it this way IS good branding.
It's also about controlling HOW you want your logo to appear in
certain context. Anyone that's written a Corporate Style Guide will
know what I'm talking about...


Good point.
This Image Replacement method [1] allows this type of control (image 
source

and size) and makes the logo clickable.

Company Name

[1] http://www.tjkdesign.com/articles/tip.asp


Thierry | www.TJKDesign.com

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Re: [WSG] Placement of company logo

[Richard Czeiger]

However, there is an argument that 
has the logo in the CSS particularly for branding purposes. Hear me 
out...
 
You put the logo in the CSS. Nice 
and big and branded etc...
Then you make a special logo for, 
oh I don't know, mobile devices. Small, crisp, pixel perfect.
Now your users can see both and 
mobile users don't get frustrated waiting eons for your massive logo to show up 
on their mobile browser (not that it fits inside the window anyway). 

 
Doing it this way IS good 
branding.
It's also about controlling HOW you 
want your logo to appear in certain context. Anyone that's written a Corporate 
Style Guide will know what I'm talking about...
 
You've also got to ask the 
question, that if people have CSS switched off, it's probably because they don't 
want to see any non-relevant information (visual or textual) possibly becuase of 
bandwidth restrictions etc...
 
If you've semantically coded your 
header with something like:
 

    
Company Name

 
Then they'll still see 
the name of your company - which still lets them know who they're dealing 
with and that that company cares about how they prefer to view the web. That's 
also good braning (maybe more on the brand personality side of things rather 
than the brand visual side).
 
R  :o) 
 
- Original Message - 
From: adam reitsma 

To: wsg@webstandardsgroup.org 
Sent: Monday, October 10, 2005 11:25 AM
Subject: Re: [WSG] Placement of company logo
My thoughts entirely.I would definitely want the company 
logo as an IMG element.If your company's site was to be viewed without 
the use of CSS, would you still want the logo the appear? I 
would.--adam--
On 10/10/05, Peter 
Ottery <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>> 
  What do others think?1 vote here for always making the logo a regular 
   and part of thehtml markup. reasoning for me is a pretty 
  simple one. its content! 
  :)cheers,pete~~~ Peter Ottery ~ 
  Creative DirectorDaemon Pty Ltd17 Roslyn GardensElizabeth Bay NSW 
  2011www.daemon.com.au**The 
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  help**

Re: [WSG] Avoiding the evil

[Richard Czeiger]

OK so someone pointed out that  would be better for poetry and I agree 
but with some reservations.
 does a nice job of handling the visual side of things but from a 
screen reader's point of view, how do they handle a line break through  
as opposed to . Do they pause or say "new line"? I think, when all is 
said and done though that  does seem better for poetry.


Anyway, no else has come forward with any examples of when to use  
apart from in an address.
This is a pretty smart group - if we can't find a decent use for it outside 
this then maybe we shoud get this formallised. In the same way that 
 elements shouldn't be placed outside a  element, let's tell 
the W3C to specify that line breaks should not be placed outside of the 
 tag.


At least this will end the debate once and for all about Line Breaks.

PS: in terms of the  element itself - check out what's happening 
over here!

http://www.w3.org/MarkUp/2004/02/xhtml-rdf.html#div154379976

R  :o)



- Original Message - 
From: "Patrick H. Lauke" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>

To: 
Sent: Monday, October 10, 2005 10:43 AM
Subject: Re: [WSG] Avoiding the evil 



Hope Stewart wrote:


I was present for Tantek's talk and I thought he said  was used
only for information about the author


Which holds true if the  is used to mark up:

- the contact information for the current site (e.g. if it's a corporate 
site and you're giving the company's contact details)
- if it's something like a directory listing where each member gets their 
own little page, the contact details for that particular member


So, the thread starter should give some info on what he's trying to mark 
up, exactly.


--
Patrick H. Lauke
__
re·dux (adj.): brought back; returned. used postpositively
[latin : re-, re- + dux, leader; see duke.]
www.splintered.co.uk | www.photographia.co.uk
http://redux.deviantart.com
__
Web Standards Project (WaSP) Accessibility Task Force
http://webstandards.org/
__
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Re: [WSG] Avoiding the evil

[Richard Czeiger]

This sounds like it's going to turn into another "let's all figure out how 
to use the  tag" thing so let me pre-empt that.


I think the bigger question is can someone proivde an example of when best 
to use the  tag in general?

What type of content semantically requires a line break.

The one thing that jumps immediately to my mind is poetry where the line 
break has serious semantic value.
Another might be for code snippets where the author wants to indicate that 
the actaull code continues on one line but is broken up in his example for 
deomnstration / readability. This is usually presented by a symbol at the 
end of the first line (>> or some such)


Any other examples?

R

- Original Message - 
From: "Hope Stewart" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>

To: "Web Standards Group" 
Sent: Monday, October 10, 2005 8:47 AM
Subject: [WSG] Avoiding the evil 


I'm getting the hang of this whole Web Standards way of designing a 
website
and for the most part can totally avoid using . But in the example 
below

I'm unsure whether I should in fact avoid using :

All correspondence should be addressed to:
The Secretary
Your Club
PO Box 999
Anytown VIC 3000

How do others code an address? My feeling is that semantically it should 
be
contained within one paragraph or entity of some sort. But if you were 
using

a screen reader, how would you differentiate one line from the next?

If I were to use an ordered list with list-style-type set to none, would
this be semantically correct? Is there a better way?

Hope Stewart

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Re: [WSG] Meta Keywords?

[Richard Czeiger]

I'd have to agree with Andreas here.

Wile for Ranking purposes they're not terribly important, at least 
Description is still sometimes used by Search Engines.


Plus there's the added notion that Meta Tags *in and of themselves* are a 
good thing to put in a page (as any librarian will tell you). Plus there's 
no way of knowing what future technoligies can put these to good use.
In saying that, of course, you'd actually have to think about making those 
meta tags *really* relevent and page-specific - otherwise, it's just guff.


:o)

R



- Original Message - 
From: "Martin Jopson" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>

To: 
Sent: Friday, October 07, 2005 2:57 PM
Subject: Re: [WSG] Meta Keywords?



So, from John & Derek's responses, am I correct in thinking there's no use
for the Meta Keywords or Meta Description tags anymore?
Any web resources/ reference for this information?
I'd like a bit more knowledge before questioning Hitwise.

Thanks
Martin

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Re: [WSG] Click here--reference

[Richard Czeiger]

Hey Damian,

Very valid point! It's not too difficult to turn a verb into an adjective.
Somehow, though, reading your example I get the feeling that it's a very 
passive voice to read in.

It almost *feels* like:

   Here's the Registration Form (which by the way you can also fill in).

What else would you do with an online form?
You could print it, but again 'print' (and 'register') seem to be different 
verbs to 'complete' and 'fill in'.

They sound like context-specific Tasks rather than simply actions.
In which case, I'd probably want to use the verb as the link text - it seems 
more forceful (at least from a marketing perspective) and there's absolutely 
no confusion as to what you are being asked to do:


   Register! Don't just look at the registration form and decide whether or 
not to.


In response to Christian's claim - sorry but no one said we were abandoning 
the title attribute at all!

This is a question of usability, rather than accessibility.

R  :o)

- Original Message - 
From: "Damian Sweeney" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>

To: 
Sent: Tuesday, September 20, 2005 12:17 PM
Subject: Re: [WSG] Click here--reference




I haven't made up my mind about verbs in links yet, but a counter example 
to yours Richard:


However, for pages where you're asked to register for a conference, for 
example, there's no way you'd put:


Register for the Forbes 
Conference.




How about:

Fill in the href="http://www.forbesconferences.com/?page=register";>Forbes Conference 
Registration Form.


Damian

--
--
Damian Sweeney
Learning Skills Adviser (online)
Language and Learning Skills Unit
Instructional Designer, AIRport Project
Equity, Language and Learning Programs
University of Melbourne
723 Swanston St
Parkville 3010
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Re: [WSG] Click here--reference

[Richard Czeiger]

Nice attempt Russ, but I'm with 
Andreas here.
If the the link takes you to a 
location whose purpose is to execute a function (apart from reading/viewing) 
then why not state that.
I've exempted reading and viewing 
as they're pretty much what you *have* to do on the web for every page - so 
that's kind of stating the obvious. However, for pages where you're asked 
to register for a conference, for example, there's no way you'd 
put:
 
Register for the Forbes Conference. 

 
That seems confusing and not very 
user-friendly  :o)
 
So would you instead put: 
Register for the Forbes Conference. 

 
I'm not a huge fan of sites that 
link every word to 
something else.
 
R  :o)
 
 
- Original Message - 

From: "Andreas Boehmer [Addictive 
Media]" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: 
Sent: Tuesday, September 20, 2005 
11:03 AM
Subject: RE: [WSG] Click 
here--reference
>> -Original 
Message->> From: russ - maxdesign [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] 
>> Sent: Tuesday, 20 September 2005 10:44 AM>> To: Web 
Standards Group>> Subject: Re: [WSG] Click here--reference>> 
>> > - A website talking about "Amaya">> > - Download 
"Amaya">> > - The "Amaya" Forum>> > - My aunty 
"Amaya">> >> So, without verbs, it could still be more 
descriptive with >> slight tweaks and>> without using 
verbs>> >> - Download the "Amaya Software">> - The 
"Amaya Forum">> - My "Aunty Amaya"> > Yeah, it's better 
than what the original site had, but I am still not> convinced. Why not 
express what the link does? If the link starts a> "download of software", 
why not say so? I can understand that people are> against linking entire 
phrases such as "Click here to view information about> my Aunty Amaya", 
but a simple "Download Amaya" doesn't harm anybody, but> makes it, in my 
opinion, more userfriendly. > > > If you think about the 
phrase:> > Download the "Amaya Software"> > To me 
the link "Amaya Software" could still be taking you to a page that> 
explains about "Amaya Software". However, "Download Amaya Software" is a> 
straight forward, unambiguous link.> > And this is independent to 
screenreaders. Let's say I come to a website> hoping to download the 
software. The keyword I am searching for is clearly> "download", in 
particular if the entire site is plastered with the term> "Amaya". Users 
scan the page and the things that stand out most are links.> So let's 
give them the keywords they are looking for - and in many cases> these 
keywords may be verbs.> > > On a different matter, I do 
like your suggestion on the "Accessible more> links". :)> > 
> **> The 
discussion list for  http://webstandardsgroup.org/> > See http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm> for some hints on posting to the 
list & getting help> 
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>

Re: [WSG] teaching students developing to web standards

[Richard Czeiger]

Wasn't this question asked not long ago?
Shouldn't people at least try to check the archives first?

R

- Original Message - 
From: "Rick Faaberg" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>

To: 
Sent: Sunday, September 11, 2005 5:27 PM
Subject: [WSG] teaching students developing to web standards



Hi all,

I need to convince a bunch of K-12 teachers to teach web standards instead
of tables-for-layout and FrontPage and Publisher type of thing to their
students.

Besides W3C, what sites should I point to for teachers who really have no
idea with any of this, and won't read umpteen sites to figure all this 
out?


Any lesson plans out there, by chance? :-)

Thanks

Rick Faaberg

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[WSG] CSS Mobile Buttons

[Richard Czeiger]

Does anyone remember on this list an example someone put together of an 
XHTML/CSS page feature a picture of a mobile phone where you could 'click' 
on the buttons (which were positioned via CSS)?


Tried looking in the archive, but can't find it.
Cheers  :o)

Richard 



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Re: [WSG] braindead - iframes???

[Richard Czeiger]

Umm, sorry Bert, Kenny's right. Totally unpredictable behavious of the 
object tag in IE6.
Sometimes won't load, sometimes throws up a script error, and any JavaScript 
that I have can't talk to it.


:o(

Any other suggestions?

R

- Original Message - 
From: "Bert Doorn" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>

To: 
Sent: Wednesday, September 07, 2005 4:07 PM
Subject: Re: [WSG] braindead - iframes???



G'day

Kenny Graham wrote:

Objects of type text/html (or application/xhtml+xml) are what I use. But 
good luck getting them to work in IE. In my experience, IE will only do it 
if it's a local (x)html file.


Works fine for me in Firefox and Opera 8.  Works in IE6 Windows as well, 
if served as text/html.   Don't know about IE5.x


If you're serving application/xhtml+xml it's not going to work in IE 
because IE doesn't like application/xhtml+xml.


Regards -- 
Bert Doorn, Better Web Design

http://www.betterwebdesign.com.au/
Fast-loading, user-friendly websites

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[WSG] braindead - iframes???

[Richard Czeiger]

Maybe a lack of coffee but in XHTML 1.0 Strict, what is there that replaces 
iframes?
I vaguely remember once being able to add the SRC attribute to a 
 but that's not up to spec.
 
What's out there that displays the contents of a URI and 
validates?
 
Cheers  :o)
Richard

Re: [WSG] td != div

[Richard Czeiger]

I think it's also important to bare in mind that there might be very good 
reasons for putting a  inside a . The most obvious one I can think 
of is the need for two background images. I think once the next standard 
incorporates this and browsers support it, there will be even less need for 
unwarranted code.


Another thing to remember is that, in the same way table layouts were used 
as CSS wasn't supported at the time, so too are multiple divs being used to 
compensate for a lack of support in browsers. Just thing of the dreaded 
Vertical Align hacks that have been thrown around across the web.


One quote I keep remembering was Tm Berners Lee saying something like, "HTML 
was never designed to be a tool for graphically displaying data". Browsers 
are still catching up with CSS Support and CSS itself is still being 
developed to allow us humble designers the ability to realise our vision in 
code.


Give it time, the standards will soon allow us to eliminate unnecessary 
code - it might take a bit to get there though.


PS: How did you manage to avoid table layouts Lucky boy!

R   :o) 



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Re: [WSG] Text Size Statistics

[Richard Czeiger]

Ah - ok ... now i get it .. sorry ... firday ... going home now  :o)

r

- Original Message - 
From: "Peter Williams"


I think confused. I took this to mean that:
- you create a standards compliant site
- a visitor with an older browser visits and sees mush
- a page explains why the page looks like mush and that the problem is with 
the older browser and explains ways to improve matters for the visitor.


This seems to be an extension of the WASP's .ahem campaign to create 
awareness of the desirability of upgrading old, non standards compliant 
browsers.




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Re: *****SPAM***** RE: [WSG] Text Size Statistics

[Richard Czeiger]

Ummm, if you were a developer would you put a link on your non-standards 
compliant site pointing to a page that tells the user why your site is 
bad


R (either confused or not catching sarcasm on a Friday afternoon)

- Original Message - 
From: "Scott Swabey - Lafinboy Productions" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>

To: 
Sent: Friday, September 02, 2005 2:48 PM
Subject: *SPAM* RE: [WSG] Text Size Statistics



So what other pages should go here...


How about a 'Why doesn't the site work in my browser' page, somewhere to
advocate the use of modern, standards compliant browsers. Maybe then users
would have a good reason to move away from non-compliant browsers, and
designers/developers would be rid of the need to worry about 90% of the
hacks we currently use.

Regards

Scott Swabey
Lafinboy Productions
www.lafinboy.com

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Re: [WSG] Text Size Statistics

[Richard Czeiger]

I think everyone's put forward 
excellent arguments, thus far.
It's important to remember that a 
lot of the time the 'why are we doing this' questions get asked because we're 
after a reasonable justification for both ourselves and our clients. I don't 
think it's enough to do something purely becuase it feels right and it's warm 
and fuzzy. There are real-world concerns in our craft and we need to address the 
business issues (cost vs value) as much as the usability issues (ensuring the 
best conventions and treatment of our users) as much as the accessibility issues 
('why do I have to have X to make this work?') as well as the moral issues 
('standards are nice').
 
Fleshing out the reason why we do 
something is just as important as the how, especially for a 'relatively' new 
industry like ours.
 
In terms of the link to a single 
page - I love this idea. Like a Creative Commons for standards-compliant web 
sites  :o)
So what other pages chould go 
here...
 
1. Accessibility 
Statement
2. Chage Text Size
3. Make Home Page
4. Standards Explaination (with 
links to validators etc...)
 
Anything else?
 
R   :o)
 
- Original Message - 

From: "Ben Wrighton - 
StraightForward"
 >> How about if we all designated a 
single page to link to which clearly explains how to change the text size in 
different browsers?

Re: [WSG] Text Size Statistics

[Richard Czeiger]

Here that, Donna?
You've been nominated! 

I await your masterwork   
:oP
 
R
 
- Original Message - 

From: "Terrence 
Wood">> I'd 
take up Donna's offer to rewrite it for you =)

Re: [WSG] Text Size Statistics

[Richard Czeiger]

Hey Hope - great idea!
BTW: Nielsen agrees with 
you...
http://www.useit.com/alertbox/20020819.html
Nothing's happend since then 
though.
Maybe an email signed by everyone 
on the list and sent to W3C's WAI http://www.w3.org/WAI/
 
R  :o)
 
- Original Message - 

From: "Hope Stewart"
 >> If text-resize icons (such as a small 
A and a big A) were by default in a browser tool bar, this would help educate 
users that they can resize text -- and then perhaps websites using fixed-sized 
fonts would get some complaints from IE users being unable to change the font 
size. Empower the people!

Re: [WSG] Text Size Statistics

[Richard Czeiger]

I like the idea of a 'friendly' accessibility page. "ve got these 'footer 
pages' that I basically copy across sites instead of thinkingn up new 
content all the time. My only concern in rewriting this is that some of my 
clients prefer very formal language for their sites.


Maybe its a case of requiring that I have two versions of both sets, one 
conversationsal and one formal.
Now... anyone want to write up both sets and present them to the WSG members 
as a template?  :o)
Seriously, though, I remember a thred on this lista while ago about 
Accessibility Statement pages and the text that should belong there - 
everyone seemed to have their own ideas, so who knows...


R  :o)

- Original Message - 
From: "Terrence Wood"
How about renaming 'accessibility statement' to 'tips for using this 
site' or something similar and talk about font sizing in there? 



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Re: [WSG] Text Size Statistics

[Richard Czeiger]

Hey Donna  :o)
 
Geeky, huh? Very well.
The Accessibility Statement is 
fairly generic (an example is here www.aidgc.com.au/accessibility.html ) and is based on an amanlgamation of various 
guru's and government's access pages. So the geek factor is probably high, but 
for politeness I'll refer to this a 'dry' instead of geek.  
:oP
 
In terms of letting people know, 
again, I'm disagreeing with Terrance, because I've come across the same strong 
negative reaction from the few people who *do* know how to use it. I guess maybe 
with everyone out there we can come up with a great way to do this.
 
Cheers,
R  :o)
 
- Original Message - 

From: "Donna 
Maurer"

>> Yes, it is still worth it 
because those people who do know really, really appreciate it. They *hate* it 
when a site doesn't allow them to resize the font. Those who I've spoken with 
have a much stronger attachment to sites that work for them, which should be 
important to all clients. 
 
>> I've not figured out how 
to let people know about it apart from showing anyone who comments that the text 
size on a site is too small. I also haven't figured out how to tell people about 
this feature on a site - 'accessibility' is probably not a great label. 

 
>> That said, can I rewrite 
your accessibilty statement for you (it's a bit passive and 
geeky)?:
 
>> "Does the text look too 
small to you? This site contains 'relative fonts' which can easily be made 
larger or smaller as you need. If you are using Internet Explorer, you can do 
this by selecting 'View>Text size>Largest'. "

Re: [WSG] Text Size Statistics

[Richard Czeiger]

Hi Terrence,
 
I agree that its not our domain, 
but I don't think that makes us completely free of responsibility.
Additionally, if no one knows about 
it - why bother. Shouldn't I just go back to to pixel-perfect font 
control.
Your phrase 'removing barriers 
to content' got me thinking... The situations seems like a Bad Boy Bubby 
scenario.
If the user is stuck in a small 
room and never told there is an outside world, are they actually missing 
anything?
You can only miss something if you 
know it's there in the first place, right?
Imagine all these people with 
visual impairment who have been suffering through tiny web fonts, never 
realising that all they had to do was press two buttons on their browser. But 
they're not really 'suffering' as such because that's the only reality they 
know.
 
My basic point is if we don't 
educate them (or point to where the barriers are that they couldn't see), then 
what's the point?
 
Just my two cents...
R  :o)
 
- Original Message - 

From: "Terrence Wood" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
 >> I'm not sure if it's the 
designer/developers domain to educate people on how to use their browsers, we 
should focus more on removing barriers to content.

Re: [WSG] Text Size Statistics

[Richard Czeiger]

Thanks Donna - Nice to hear from a 
usability professional.
I guess this raises the question: 
If we're all going hell-for-leather making fluid sites with relative fonts 
for increased usability / accessibility and no one knows about it or how to use 
it, then:
 
a) Is it worth the effort? 

Emotionally, I'd say 'yes'. I want 
to do the right thing, but if testing, debugging and getting it to work properly 
is an extra 2 - 3 hours of development time then is it worth it economically 
(for my client)?
 
b) How do we tell people about 
it?
What's the best way to spread the 
word?
In my sites' Accessibility 
Statement, I have the following text:

This site uses only relative font sizes, compatible with the 
user-specified "text size" option in visual browsers. This option can be 
adjusted by the user, allowing them to change the text size of their browser. 


 
But is it enough? How many people 
read my beautifully written Accessibility Statement anyway? Should I be putting 
up a separate page "How to change your text size" and link to it in the footer 
of every page? If so, my footers are getting a little crowded...
1. Copyright 
2. Disclaimer 
3. Privacy 
4. Accessibility 
5. Site Map  
Now.. 6. Change Text 
Size
 
Seems a bit like overkill, 
no?
 
- Original Message - 

From: "Donna 
Maurer"
>> ... The general consensus is that 
most of the general user population (ie those who do not create sites) do not 
know about the feature.

[WSG] Text Size Statistics

[Richard Czeiger]

Hi all    :o)
 
Have a client whose text size in IE is set to Largest (like my Dad).
Just wondering if anyone knows of a resource out there that maps out the 
percentage of users that:
 
a) know about View > Text Size, and 
 
b) actually change it and if so, to what?
 
Any help would be good and, I think, useful to us folks.
Cheers  :o)
 
Richard

Re: [WSG] help or web standards group?

[Richard Czeiger]

I don't know, Lea...

Perhaps there should be two lists - one for discussing 
standards/accessibility/best practice and one for "how do I fix my 
float/site check please".
Personally, the latter tends to just fill up my Inbox, whereas I find the 
former really interesting and challenging
Some gurus out there might be amenable to 'mentoring' newbies on the second 
list ...
If one list were the standards/accessibility/best practice, perhaps at the 
end of a discussion the person how opened the topic puts together a summary, 
creating a Best Practice Guidelines for the topic discussed. This would be 
an awesome resource for beginners and advanced programmers alike.


Anyway, I can understand Mike's position - sometimes it can be frustrating 
when you have so many people, all at different levels and with different 
requirements.
The list membership has grown significantly (thanks to the fine efforts of 
the moderators and members themselves).

Perhaps it's time to evolve the list?

Just a thought   :o)
Richard


- Original Message - 
From: "Lea de Groot" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>

To: 
Sent: Tuesday, July 12, 2005 7:07 AM
Subject: Re: [WSG] help or web standards group?



On Mon, 11 Jul 2005 21:30:24 +0100, Mike Whitehurst wrote:

is this mailing list for anything other than helping novice designers
with their hacks?


This is definitely a mailing list for discussing all aspects of web
standards.
Any technical list is going to have a large proportion of 'newbie'
questions - its just the nature of the beast.
If you have a more advanced topic to discuss, please do raise it! I'm
sure you will find the 'senior' members coming out of the woodwork to
discuss it if it intrigues them :)

warmly,
Lea
--
Lea de Groot
Elysian Systems - http://elysiansystems.com/
Brisbane, Australia
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Re: [WSG] are underscores a problem

[Richard Czeiger]

Does that mean the best way to go fro ID, Class Names, Variables, etc... is 
interCaps (also known as CamelCase or lowerCamelCase) ?


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CamelCase

R


- Original Message - 
From: "Ben Curtis" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>

To: 
Sent: Friday, July 08, 2005 9:07 AM
Subject: Re: [WSG] are underscores a problem




That said, I was asked if we could modify some id and class names  to go 
from
nav1sub1 to nav1_sub1 . I told them my preference would be nav1- sub1. 
But
then I thought I should check to see if there would be any problems 
using an

underscore in an id or class. Is it one of the legal characters?



This topic came up a month ago. Read the archived thread for more info.

Underscores were illegal in CSS 2.0, but "legalized" in 2.1 since  every 
browser except Netscape 4 violated that rule. Since 2.1 is a  refinement 
of 2.0, 2.1 completely replaces 2.0 -- that is, there is  no such thing as 
conforming to CSS 2.0, like you could conform to  both HTML 4 and XHTML 1.


Hyphens are not forbidden, but are frowned on since they caused minor 
problems with some versions of Javascript interacting with IDs. I  don't 
remember the specifics.


If you need to support Netscape Navigator 4.x, do not put underscores  in 
your IDs or class names.


--

Ben Curtis : webwright
bivia : a personal web studio
http://www.bivia.com
v: (818) 507-6613




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Re: [WSG] looking for an accessibility reference on why text-only is bad

[Richard Czeiger]

Good article, Kay!

I'd try sending them there, but in the end it's a matter of balancing some 
of the following things:


1. spending time educating the client
2. maintaining an acceesible approach to design
3. Runing a business

If after trying to educate the client (a 10 minute phone conversation you're 
NOT going to get paid for), and they still want a text only page "just 
because we think it's best", then cave in...
But cave in your way - make a 'text-only' looking stylesheet and charge them 
for the work!

You maintain standards and accessibility as well as get paid!

Alternatively make a text-only copy of the whoel site and charge them double 
as it's twice the work than the original scope.

...


I'm just at the point of screaming when it comes to corporate clients who 
'know best' about things and insist on doing it their way.
Fine - i'll explain the pros and cons and give my professional, experienced 
and informed opinion.
If they throw it in the bin and ask me to do anything extra, then they can 
pay for it.


I'll bet good money that if you tell them it's going to be an extra $2500 
for a text-only version, or $250 to whip up a styleswitcher and CSS file 
then they'll go for the cheap option every single time. In this case, it 
happens to co-incide with an accessible approach.


Just my *somewhat frazzled at End of Financial Year* two cents..

:o)

R

- Original Message - 
From: "Kay Smoljak" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>

To: 
Sent: Thursday, June 30, 2005 12:12 PM
Subject: Re: [WSG] looking for an accessibility reference on why text-only 
is bad



On 6/30/05, Richard Czeiger <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
Use a styleswitcher to to display your 'text-only' courier-based 
stylesheet


We *could* do that... but I'd rather educate the client :)

To answer my own question, soon after posting (isn't that always the
way) I found this very good article on Webcredible:
http://www.webcredible.co.uk/user-friendly-resources/web-accessibility/text-only.shtml

--
Kay Smoljak
http://kay.smoljak.com/
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Re: [WSG] looking for an accessibility reference on why text-only is bad

[Richard Czeiger]

Cheat!

Use a styleswitcher to to display your 'text-only' courier-based stylesheet 
:o)


Richard


- Original Message - 
From: "Kay Smoljak" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>

To: 
Sent: Thursday, June 30, 2005 11:55 AM
Subject: [WSG] looking for an accessibility reference on why text-only is 
bad



We're doing a tender for a client that has requested a text-only
version of the site, for accessibility reasons. Now, *I* know that
that's ridiculous and text-only is not an acceptable alternative to an
accessible site, but I need some good verbage/references to explain
that (and what we propose instead) but I'm kinda lost for the right
words.

Does anyone know of a good online article/resource to help me out?
Something specific to Australian legislation would be fantastic.

Thanks!

--
Kay Smoljak
http://kay.smoljak.com/
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Re: [WSG] AJAX and accesibility

[Richard Czeiger]

http://www.standards-schmandards.com/index.php?2005/03/01/16-ajax-and-accessibility

http://adactio.com/journal/display.php/20050308163812.xml

- Original Message - 
From: "Maarten Stolte" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>

To: 
Sent: Wednesday, June 29, 2005 5:55 PM
Subject: [WSG] AJAX and accesibility


Hello,

I'm trying to find out if there are any resources on AJAX and accesibility.
It seems to me that if I would employ AJAX technologies on my site to enable 
a richer application experience, I would still need to code for 
non-JavaScript useragents . I also think that with screenreaders, lots of 
AJAX tricks would be hard to parse, even if such a reader would have 
JavaScript.


Do these things hold true, and are there other things that I need to take 
into account?


regards,

Maarten Stolte


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Re: [WSG] 'strong' as class name

[Richard Czeiger]

Hi tee,

I still think the  tag is the way to go for you.
In your example you have inline text that you want to make bold and a diff 
colour and font.
This *shounds* like you want to strongly emphasis that text. Why not use the 
 element to do it?

You can still apply your styles:

Strong is bold


strong {
   font: 1em bold Arial, san-serif;
   text-transform: uppercase;
   text-decoration: none;
   color: #369;
}


I'd make the argument that if you still don't want to use the  tag 
then at least think of a different name for your class as i think it might 
get confusing later on.


Cheers  :o)
Richard


- Original Message - 
From: "tee" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>

To: 
Sent: Sunday, June 26, 2005 9:52 PM
Subject: Re: [WSG] 'strong' as class name




Thank you Andy, for the link and reminder.
Note that the second font family is 'sans-serif' (with an 's' and 
hyphen).

Should be:
Strong is bold

They are correct in my files. I should have paid more attention in typing
when posting question to the list so to prevent confusion.


FURTHER READING
<
http://www.devarticles.com/c/a/Web-Style-Sheets/CSS-shorthand-at-a-glance/2/ >

Cheers,

tee

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Re: [WSG] the use of reset buttons on forms

[Richard Czeiger]

In terms of accessibility and usability...
what's the difference between RESET and refreshing the page?

R


- Original Message - 
From: "Andreas Boehmer" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>

To: 
Sent: Wednesday, June 15, 2005 10:48 AM
Subject: [WSG] the use of reset buttons on forms



Hi guys,

just wanted to hear what other people's thoughts on this topic are. I 
have been adding submit & reset buttons to most of my forms all along. 
But I am getting the feeling that the reset button is not only a waste 
of time, but in fact fairly user-unfriendly.


Seriously: how many people enter data into a form and go so completely 
wrong that they want to erase everything they have just done and start 
over new?


On the other hand, how many people *accidentally* press the reset 
button when they actually wanted to hit the submit button? I know it 
happened to me more than once. You're in a rush, you click without 
thinkings... all your work is lost!


Here we could go into the discussion if the reset button should be on 
the left or on the right, but personally I am getting the feeling that 
the reset button is a mostly useless feature that pops up on almost 
every form.


Now a "Cancel" or "Back" button, that's something different!

Any comments?
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Re: [WSG] CSS List Separator

[Richard Czeiger]

Thanks, Patrick.

John reminded me of the counters. I'd forgotten about them because of their 
total lack of support...

C'est la guerre  :o)

Richard

- Original Message - 
From: "Patrick H. Lauke" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>

To: 
Sent: Wednesday, June 15, 2005 10:30 AM
Subject: Re: [WSG] CSS List Separator



Richard Czeiger wrote:

Wondering how we can get CSS to specifity the spearator used in ordered 
lists


As far as I can tell, you should be able to define that with the styles 
provided for automatic numbering and lists in CSS 2.1

http://www.w3.org/TR/CSS21/generate.html#counters
(specifically, content and counter() )

However, this is not a viable solution if you need it to be supported in 
most browsers (can't remember exactly, but I think only Opera at this 
stage supports this part of the spec).


--
Patrick H. Lauke
_
re·dux (adj.): brought back; returned. used postpositively
[latin : re-, re- + dux, leader; see duke.]
www.splintered.co.uk | www.photographia.co.uk
http://redux.deviantart.com
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[WSG] CSS List Separator

[Richard Czeiger]

Hi all, 
 
Wondering how we can get CSS to specifity the spearator used in ordered 
lists (ie: the thing between the list item number and the value of the list 
item). For example...
 
1.
    a)
        1 - 
            a: 
 
I need this ability to replicate government legislation and apparently it 
has to be an EXACT duplicate. As far as I can tell, this isn't in the spec. Has 
anyone found a solution? Some fancy CSS hack or DOM scripting that will get 
around this?
 
Cheers  :o)
 
Richard

Re: [WSG] Sydney and Melbourne WSG meetings tonight

[Richard Czeiger]

Would love to, Peter, but this month I have an engagement I can't get out 
of.

See you next month...

Richard  :o)

- Original Message - 
From: "Peter Firminger" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>

To: 
Sent: Thursday, June 09, 2005 11:46 AM
Subject: [WSG] Sydney and Melbourne WSG meetings tonight



I only have 8 RSVPs for Sydney so far?

Please let us know (if you haven't already) if you are coming on
[EMAIL PROTECTED] or [EMAIL PROTECTED] asap (like
NOW!)

http://webstandardsgroup.org/meetings/ for details.

Regards,

Peter Firminger

***
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+614 12932269
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[WSG] Privacy Statements Standards

[Richard Czeiger]

Maybe we can steer it towards web standards?
Anyone interested in Privacy as a standard should check out the W3C's 
Platform for Privacy Preferences
http://www.w3.org/P3P/

This is a W3C Recommendation and has been around for a bit now...
Richard  :o) 

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Re: [WSG] New site: something for vegans

[Richard Czeiger]

That's really bizzare, ben.
Thanks for pointing it out - I'll look into it...

:o)

Richard

- Original Message -
From: "Ben Hamilton" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: 
Sent: Thursday, April 21, 2005 1:28 PM
Subject: Re: [WSG] New site: something for vegans


Using FF1.0.3, WinXPsp2, 1280x1024.
On the FAQ page, last question, the link, when i mouseover this, it
only becomes a link in a very small area (i.e. not over it but just
above it). All the other links I tried work correctly.

Do vegans make better lovers? They think so. (www.newveg.av.org).

Ben.

On 4/21/05, Richard Czeiger <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> Hi all ;o)
>
> Requesting a site check as well as design comments/suggestions...
> www.vfme.com
>
> Off-list responses encouraged, but if it's an issue you think everyone
would
> benefit from please post on-list.
>
> BTW: if anyone wants to contribute a recipe, that would be great too!
>
> Many thanks,
> Richard
>
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--
Ben Hamilton  -  Director, Wallis Hamilton Industries Pty Ltd
Email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Web: http://wallishamilton.com/about/
Telephone 0410 460 333 (Australia) +61 410 460 333 (Internationally)

Building web sites that work
http://wallishamilton.com/
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[WSG] New site: something for vegans

[Richard Czeiger]

Hi all ;o)

Requesting a site check as well as design comments/suggestions...
www.vfme.com

Off-list responses encouraged, but if it's an issue you think everyone would
benefit from please post on-list.

BTW: if anyone wants to contribute a recipe, that would be great too!

Many thanks,
Richard




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Re: [WSG] IMAGE(was Mystical belief etc)

[Richard Czeiger]

Perhaps the point here should be:

If you have a Flash Site and an HTML Site, then why not make the HTML Site
accessible?
It takes exactly the same amount of effort and it's not as though your
design is extrameley difficult to be realised in standards compliant
XHTML/CSS.

Why not take a couple of days to redo the HTML Site so that it's useful?
Just a thought...

Richard

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Re: [WSG] markup readability

[Richard Czeiger]

>>> It should never be a *rule*. This sort of thing can and should only ever
fall under the moniker of "best practice examples".

Absolutely, Patrick!

A set of 'best practices' or 'conventions' is what we should be aiming for.
Obviously, every site will have its own set of criteria that may deem it
necesary to move away from these, but they should still be useful as a
starting point.

Richard

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Re: [WSG] markup readability (was: newspaper format)

[Richard Czeiger]

This is a great issue and one where I think the WSG can take the lead and
put forward a standard.

To Patrick's comment
'header' is a tricky one and your points about its print origins are very
valid. Perhaps we can take that and still use the print reference by calling
it 'masthead' as this actually does refer to all the elements you spoke of
and doesn't have the same presentational weight as 'header'.

Perhaps there can be a list of appropriate 'values' for IDs or classes.
Most of us already use:

container
wrapper
header/masthead
nav
content
footer

Maybe we can formalise this list so that it becomes a
'see-if-any-of-these-are-relevant-first' list of values that people can use.
If what they need is not on the list then they can make up their own...

If anyone wants to add to this list maybe we can pass it around and when it
gets comprehensive enough, put it up on the WSG site as a resource.
Just a thought...

Richard

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[WSG] Templates with Content at Top

[Richard Czeiger]

Hi all  :o)
 
Been messing around with templates. Standard column stuff, but 
with content at top in the HTML.
I've checked it out on PC in IE5.0, IE6.0, Opera7.0 and 
FireFox1.0 and it works a charm (pixel perfect!  :o).
Can you please test on Mac in FireFox and Safari and let me 
know how it goes?
 
With the 3 Column template I made a concenssion by putting the 
Content and the Right hand side column in a wrapper  thinking that 
semantically, the right hand side is usually related in some way to the content 
(but this is more a case of me convincing myself).
 
www.drunkmonkey.com.au/2col.html

www.drunkmonkey.com.au/3col.html
 
Anyway, thoughts would be appreciated.
Cheers  :o)
 
Richard

Re: [WSG] Skip Navigation Visibility

[Richard Czeiger]

I accept the point, Russ.

However, on a practical level, the concern that Ben expressed regarding
accessibility compared to the importance of the content on the page is a
decision the users need to make all the time and one that doesn't usually
cost a lot:

"Interesting content... I guess I'll push through the site even though it
obviously isn't built for me."

vs

"I'm not even doing to bother looking at this site even though it might have
the answers I'm looking for".

For any web user (disabled or not) the second attitude isn't going to get
them very far. I'm hoping that if I build a site that features good
accessibility options then I will get people more people **preferring** to
use my site over others that may have similar content.

I've been following the Skip Link discussion because I find it to be a very
contentious issue. No one has seemed to come up with a 100% successful
answer that pleases everybody. My point is this: even **having** the Skip to
Content feature on the site in any form is a far sight better than not
having one. If it only works for blind users and not physically disabled
users, it's still better than sites that don't have one at all.

I dare say that there are more sites out there that don't have then than
those that do. Do visually or physically disabled people 'not bother' to
look at ALL those pages?

At the end of the day, we're still *trying* to get it right. It sometimes
feels as though we're being beaten over the head for not having everything
function perfectly for everybody - and I don't think we ever will (too many
different types of people, too diverse a range of technology).

It seems as though we should be giving a 'clap on the back' for those
developers that spend hours of their time *testing* all these ideas out with
the aim of making peoples lives better...

PS: Sorry about the soapbox - it's the end of the week and I needed to
vent...

R  :o)


- Original Message -
From: "russ - maxdesign" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: "Web Standards Group" 
Sent: Friday, April 15, 2005 9:54 AM
Subject: Re: [WSG] Skip Navigation Visibility


Richard, these are all good questions. The best thing to do as actually
observe real people (with disabilities) interacting with sites.

I have watched blind users and users with severe vision impairment who
become frustrated and leave sites very quickly. They are more likely to
struggle on if the information is very important or only available at one
particular site.

When David Woodbridge's was demonstrating a poorly built site to the WSG
last year he commented:
"I am doing this to demonstrate the problems. In real life I would never
really go this far into a site this bad, I would have left on the fist
page".

Think of it in other terms. If there was a shop with major physical barriers
(like being forced to climb a ladder just to get into the shop), and the
shop keeper was never available, would you hang around long? Compare that to
a shop nearby with easy access and friendly staff.

Russ



> Are users really *that* impatient? Does the physically disabled site user
> not even bother to see if the content on the page is worth-while? As a
> developer who believes in validation, would you not bother looking at a
page
> if you you didn't see a little xhtml link at the bottom?
>
> Should we bother to build site for people who don't bother to use them?
>
> Just a thought...
>
> And a reminder that we're after best practice within the contrainsts
> provided by the project and the technology, not a rigid, total and utter
> compliancy to every living mammal on the planet.
>
> R

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Re: [WSG] Skip Navigation Visibility

[Richard Czeiger]

Are users really *that* impatient? Does the physically disabled site user
not even bother to see if the content on the page is worth-while? As a
developer who believes in validation, would you not bother looking at a page
if you you didn't see a little xhtml link at the bottom?

Should we bother to build site for people who don't bother to use them?

Just a thought...

And a reminder that we're after best practice within the contrainsts
provided by the project and the technology, not a rigid, total and utter
compliancy to every living mammal on the planet.

R

- Original Message -
From: "Ben Wrighton" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: 
Sent: Friday, April 15, 2005 9:03 AM
Subject: RE: [WSG] Skip Navigation Visibility


One small thing that bothers me with the tab to make skip nav visible
approach.

What if a physically disabled site visitor loads the page, doesn't see the
[skip nav], thinks "bugger this" and leaves before tabbing? Especially if
the site's home page does not contain an accessibility statement.

I'd like to know what a web savvy physically disabled person thinks about
this technique (which other that this small concern I really like).

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Re: [WSG] Styling Forms

[Richard Czeiger]

How about plain old form elements?
Example:


form { font: 65%/1.2 verdana, sans-serif; margin-bottom: 3em; }
fieldset { margin-bottom: 0.3em; border: none; }
label { width: 160px; }
label.radio { width: auto; }
input, select, textarea { font-family: verdana; font-size: 1.0em;
_background: none !important; }
select { width: 152px; }
.hiddenFields { display: none; }




  
First Name

  

  
Last Name

  

  
Email Address

  

  
How Did You Find Us?

  Please select ...
  A Friend Told You About Us
  Poster
  Flyer
  Google
  Other Search Engine
  Television Ad
  Radio
  Newspaper
  Other

  

  
Comments

  

  

  




Richard   :o)

- Original Message -
From: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: 
Sent: Tuesday, April 05, 2005 1:40 PM
Subject: [WSG] Styling Forms


Good evening all,

I know there's two schools of thought regarding forms where one uses a
table and the other a definition list to style and layout the data fields.

I have a simple form on a client's "Contact Us" page, and I wondered if
there's a consensus as to which method is more semantically correct?

Please advise...

Kind regards,
Mario S. Cisneros


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[WSG] Suckerfish Sliding Doors Image Replacement with Current Page .. Navigation

[Richard Czeiger]

Let's combine a whole bunch of different CSS concepts and hope 
it works in everything.   :o)
 
Check out this link:
http://www.grafx.com.au/wip/test/test.html
 
Here's the CSS:
http://www.grafx.com.au/wip/test/styles/style.css
 
On the navigation:
 
1. The suckerfish drop down on "services" in the menu 
works.
2. Replaced all the text links with sliding doors 
background images.
3. Because we're on the Client page, this has it's roll-over 
state on.
 
All this works PERFECTLY on PC FireFox, PC IE 5.0 and PC IE 
6.0.
Mac Safari? The nav doesn't work at all
Can't even click on the buttons.
 
Can anyone PLEASE help me?
I don't have OSX 10.2 so I can't test on Safari.
 
Anything to get me out of this hole would be greately 
appreciated!.
 
Cheers  :o)
Richard

[WSG] CSS in HTML Emails

[Richard Czeiger]

Hi all,

Just wondering if there is a compatibility chart out there for CSS
properties in HTML emails.
We've got charts for the browsers, but what about email clients?

Additionally, what about CSS support in mobile phone browsers?
What browsers are used in which mobile phones?

If anyone has charts out there or tests they've done to see what 'safe'
values can be used this would very much appreciated.

Cheers  :o)
Richard

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Re: [WSG] A HREF around a Flash Object?

[Richard Czeiger]

Use JavaScript to communicate to flash's command and arguments.
Look up how to do this in Google.

:o)

Richard

- Original Message - 
From: "Matt" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: 
Sent: Tuesday, March 22, 2005 10:14 AM
Subject: [WSG] A HREF around a Flash Object?


Hi Everyone, hope you are well.

I am currently developing a website for a customer who requires
certain animated "tiles" which link through to other pages - they have
decided to use Flash for these.

I know in Flash hyperlinking to other pages is handled in the flash
file itself. However, I wondered if there is a standards compliant way
that I can wrap an "A HREF" around the flash object, so that the
hyperlinking is controlled by the web page, not the flash file?

That way users without Flash can still link through to the target page.

Any Ideas?

Cheers,

Matt
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Re: [WSG] Asterisks in W3C spec

[Richard Czeiger]

In answer to your question, Sigurd - the asterisk indicates that that
attribute is required for that elements (as opposed to optional).
For example, if you use the  you MUST include a SRC and an ALT
attribute for it to be valid.

Cheers  :o)
Richard


- Original Message -
From: "Sigurd Magnusson" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: 
Sent: Tuesday, March 15, 2005 6:10 PM
Subject: [WSG] Asterisks in W3C spec


I keep seeing asterisks in the W3C spec but cannot see a glossary anywhere.
As an example, with the img element in xhtml 1.1, the attributes 'src' and
'alt' are both marked with an asterisk. Why?

http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml-modularization/abstract_modules.html#s_imagemodul
e

(I realise img is marked to be deprecated in xhtml2, but I feel adoption for
that will require new browsers to come out and gain market share, as the
object tag has a huge set of problems)

Finally, is there a commentary somewhere about the use of longdesc vs alt vs
title (e.g. on images, on images where they are the sole content of links,
etc). There seems to be a bit of information here and there, and obviously I
can use common sense, but was wondering if there was some high-calibre
writing out there, spelling out the different browser support and an overall
conclusion?

Siggy


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Re: [WSG] Writing with a markup language

[Richard Czeiger]

Sorry - I think Bert has a point - only 20 out of the 1500 of us getting
this email speak italian.
Before sending all of us to your article, maybe you could have stated that
it is intended for Italian-speakers.


- Original Message -
From: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: 
Sent: Friday, March 04, 2005 2:49 AM
Subject: Re: [WSG] Writing with a markup language


That site is not mine: those guys (students) ask me to write an article
for Mibmagazine. That's what I've done.

My only joined to that magazine is the article. I've already tell them all
your considerations about standards and documents' structure: ther're too
"busy now".

This is my site: www.itgmarinoni.it.

Best wishes,
Piero.

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Re: [WSG] double space after period

[Richard Czeiger]

great comments thus far, but i think we're getting into the area where
things are being said twice or getting into wy too fine a point.

when exactly does this thread get closed?

r

- Original Message -
From: "Paul Novitski" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: 
Sent: Friday, February 11, 2005 10:40 AM
Subject: Re: [WSG] double space after period


Because there's such a mix of opinions about the value of double-spacing
between sentences and its history, I asked my friend John D. Berry,
typographer & book designer of note, to give me the low-down on
double-spacing to post to this list.
__

At 01:50 PM 2/10/2005, John D. Berry wrote:

Paul --

Double-spacing after periods is a habit that began in the 19th century --
not a period noted for its fine typography! -- and has no justification
whatsoever. I don't need to expound on the subject, however; it's already
been done succinctly by Robert Bringhurst in The Elements of Typographic
Style (2nd ed, pp 28-30):

"2.1.4 Use a single word space between sentences.

"In the nineteenth century, which was a dark and inflationary age in
typography and type design, many compositors were encouraged to stuff extra
space between sentences. Generations of twentieth-century typists were then
taught to do the same, by hitting the spacebar twice after every period.
Your typing as well as your typesetting will benefit from unlearning this
quaint Victorian habit. As a general rule, no more than a single space is
required after a period, a colon or any other mark of punctuation. Larger
spaces (e.g., en spaces) are themselves punctuation."

Being a poet and a scholar, Bringhurst goes on to mention one exception
(probably not one that your discussion of text on the web is going to run
into very often):

"The rule is usually altered, however, when setting classical Latin and
Greek, romanized Sanskrit, phonetics or other kinds of texts in which
sentences begin with lowercase letters. In the absence of a capital, a full
en space (M/2) between sentences will generally be welcome." How you
accomplish this in justified text, since the en space is a fixed space, is
a job for a careful typesetter.

In a more general way, and for composition in metal type, Jan Tschichold
set very high standards when he took over the re-design of Penguin Books in
the late 1940s; he was sending jobs to virtually every typesetter and
printer in Britain, and had to standardize the results that would come
back. The very first section of his "Penguin Composition Rules" is titled
"Text Composition" (1947) [with my notes in brackets]:

"All text composition should be as closely word-spaced as possible. As a
rule, the spacing should be about a middle space or the thickness of an 'i'
in the type size used. [This would be the width of the piece of type,
including the built-in space around it, not just the visual width of the
"i" itself.]

"Wide spaces should be strictly avoided. Words may be freely broken
whenever necessary to avoid wide spacing, as breaking words is less harmful
to the appearance of the page than too much space between words." [I
usually add: try to avoid misleading word breaks, such as "rein-state,"
which can lead the reader to misread the sentence the first time through.]

"All major punctuation marks - full point, colon, and semicolon - should be
followed by the same spacing as is used throughout the rest of the line."

It's worth noting that Tschichold also set a standard of adding a small
space before colons, semicolons, question marks, and exclamation points --
not a full word space, but a slight additional space, so the punctuation
doesn't get subsumed into the word shape. I try to do this when I typeset
text, and I wish more digital fonts were designed with extra sidebars
around (or at least before) those punctuation marks. Obviously this extra
space isn't needed before periods or commas, but I often run into automatic
kerning pairs that would tuck the period or comma way too far under the
overhanging part of a final letter like "r" or "y." Our mania for kerning
sometimes creates more visual problems than it solves.

In all of these areas, the precise spacing needed to get the most readable
text depends on the typeface used, of course. The spacing of the letters
affects the spacing of the words affects the spacing of the lines, and so
on all the way out to the margins of the page - and back again. Typography
is all about space.

And now we'll see whether the fact that I've used italics and en dashes for
clarity in this text - rather than the truncated "plain text" that I
usually limit myself to in e-mail - breaks the system or not. I hope not.

John

:: :: ::

John D. Berry

book design & typography:
http://home.earthlink.net/~typograp
her/


dot-font:
http://www.creativepro.com/
author/home/951.html


Contemporary Newspaper Design:

Re: [WSG] double space after period

[Richard Czeiger]

too true paul

forgot about those nasty little buggers  :o)

oh well

R  :o)


- Original Message -
From: "Paul Novitski" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: 
Sent: Thursday, February 10, 2005 10:55 AM
Subject: Re: [WSG] double space after period


At 03:31 PM 2/9/2005, Richard Czeiger wrote:
>Here's a little script that might help this issue.
>It takes the element with the id of "content" and adds an extra white space
>at the end of a sentence to the existing one.
>This way, the code is still clean and you can have your whitespace cake and
>eat it too!  :o)


Richard,

I see the problem as not so much where the periods are, but where the
sentences begin in prose dotted with abbreviations, n'est ce pas?  Your
script commits the double misdemeanor of assuming that every period ends a
sentence and forgetting about all that other punctuation that so often --
but not always! -- ends a sentence.

Paul


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Re: [WSG] double space after period

[Richard Czeiger]

Hi guys,

Here's a little script that might help this issue.
It takes the element with the id of "content" and adds an extra white space
at the end of a sentence to the existing one.
This way, the code is still clean and you can have your whitespace cake and
eat it too!  :o)

function addSpace() {
  var string = document.getElementById("content");
  var swapWhat = /\u002E\s/g;
  newString = string.innerHTML.replace(swapWhat, "\u002E\u00A0\u00A0");
  string.innerHTML = newString;
}
window.onload = addSpace;


Hope this helps,
Richard   :o)


- Original Message -
Theoretically, the extra space could help users with cognitive impairment.
The problems would be 1) testing this theory and 2) if
it was found to be of benefit to specific groups of users, and you thought
it was important on a particular site, how to achieve it without polluting
to code/content.


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Re: [WSG] Web app guidance/site comment

[Richard Czeiger]

nice work  :o)

you can get a badge!
http://images.google.com/images?q=w3c+validation&imgsz=icon&hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF
-8&rls=GGLC,GGLC:1970-01,GGLC:en&start=20&sa=N

:o)

R

- Original Message -
From: "Brendan Smith" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: 
Sent: Friday, February 04, 2005 7:21 PM
Subject: [WSG] Web app guidance/site comment


Greetings all,

I'm currently working on a web app that I have created in as much of a web
standards karma giving way as I can muster.

If I could get some feed back on this little number from the crowd out there
I would be most greatful. General tips and pointers are what I'm after.

If you look closely enough it might be blatantly obvious who this project is
for. Ok, if you're from Sydney Australia and drive a car/have a license that
is.

https://monitor.hpa.com.au/rta/ 

This is in no way a live product, and for the most part are just a bunch of
static HTML files. Expect no magic within! Or live database for that matter.

I have managed to keep the majority of pages valid in both HTML and CSS.
(When I typed that I felt I should get a badge or something?)

The only quirk I have with it is how some tables will wrap/drop below the
menu on IE in tight areas (narrow your browser on the home page). Is this to
be expected?

Thanks in advance for your time...

Brendan




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Re: [WSG] Semantically creating 'pipes' for footer links

[Richard Czeiger]

Ah yes - now I remember  :o)

Richard

- Original Message -
From: "Neerav" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: 
Sent: Tuesday, October 05, 2004 2:36 PM
Subject: Re: [WSG] Semantically creating 'pipes' for footer links


Richard

See how I display the pipes on the horizontal menu at www.bhatt.id.au
using css borders.

the list itself has a border-left, and all list items have a border-right

Neerav Bhatt
http://www.bhatt.id.au
Web Development & IT consultancy
Mobile: +61 (0)403 8000 27

http://www.bhatt.id.au/blog/ - Ramblings Thoughts
http://www.bookcrossing.com/mybookshelf/neerav

Richard Czeiger wrote:
>
> Sure but this only works on, like, two browsers!
> Is there a funckier CSS hack kind of way?
>
> :o)
>
> Richard
>
> - Original Message -
> *From:* Kevin Futter <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> *To:* wsg@webstandardsgroup.org <mailto:wsg@webstandardsgroup.org>
> *Sent:* Tuesday, October 05, 2004 12:02 PM
> *Subject:* Re: [WSG] Semantically creating 'pipes' for footer links
>
> For the line wrapping issue, you could try:
>
> whitespace: nowrap;
>
> On whatever element is giving you trouble.
>
> Cheers,
> Kevin Futter
>
> On 5/10/04 11:28 AM, "Richard Czeiger" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]>> wrote:
>
> Hi guys,
>
> I'm putting together a semantically correct UL of links for my
> footer.
> I'd like to have them separated by 'pipes' as this is a common
> and easily recognised technique.
> But the pipes themselves are irrelevant (semantically). So
> here's what I've come up with...
>
> ALSO! My one thing is that if the text inside the links is made
> up of two or more words, then they get pushed to separate lines.
> Is there a way to avoid this without specifying a width or
> without putting a 'no broken spaces' between the words?
> Can you suggest anything better?
>
>
> 
> #footer {
>  text-align: center;
> }
> #footer ul li {
>  display: inline; width: 1px;
>  margin: auto 5px; padding-left: 10px; border-left: 1px solid
> #00;
>  line-height: 120%;
> }
> #footer ul li:first-child { border-left: none; }
> /* Not rendered by a few agents, so we'll use the
> 'footerBorderKill' javascript function switches off the first
> child's left border */
> 
>
> 
>   
>  accesskey="1">link
> link
> with multiple words
>  accesskey="3">link
>  accesskey="4">link with NoBrokenSpaces
>  accesskey="5">link
>   
>   
> http://validator.w3.org/check/referer";
> rel="external" title="Check XHTML">xhtml
>  href="http://jigsaw.w3.org/css-validator/check/referer";
> rel="external" title="Check CSS">css
>  href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.0/";
> rel="external" title="View license">cc
>   
> 
>
> //<![CDATA[
> // Kills the Left Border on the Footer Navigation
> function footerBorderKill() {
>  myBody=document.getElementById('footer');
>  myBodyElements=myBody.getElementsByTagName("ul"); // Gets all
> the UL elements that are children of 'footer'
>  for( var i = 0; i < myBodyElements.length; i++ ) {
>   myList=myBodyElements.item(i); // Loops through all the ULs in
> the footer
>   myListElements=myList.getElementsByTagName("li"); // Gets all
> the LI elements that are children of the ULs
>   myLI=myListElements.item(0); // Gets the first item of the
> list of LI elements
>   myLI.style.borderLeft = 'none'; // And sets its border to
nothing
>  }
> }
> window.onload = footerBorderKill;
> file://]]>
>
>
>
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[WSG] Validate Accessibility

[Richard Czeiger]

Hi all   :o)
 
Just a quick query: we all know that to havre a little link on 
the bottom of the page to validate XHTML and CSS we can use a funky URL with the 
term "referer" in the address. What about Accessibility validation for Bobby or 
Cynthia? The only way I know how to do this is to hardcode the URL of the site. 
If i wanted to check the validity of the specific page I would have to put that 
page's URL in the link. Is there anyway around this in the manner of XHTML and 
CSS without _javascript_?
 
Cheers  :o)
 
Richard

Re: [WSG] Centering thumbnails

[Richard Czeiger]

Had the same problem with my holiday snaps  :o)
Check out http://www.grafx.com.au/dik/region.html?MuiNe-1-21 for an example
of how it's done.
Hope this helps  :o)

R

- Original Message -
From: "BonusOntwerp" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: 
Sent: Tuesday, January 04, 2005 8:11 PM
Subject: Re: [WSG] Centering thumbnails


The hardcoded height and width for the images is meant as an example.
Because the thumbnails are generated from a database (in a next level).
So the images have to fit inside a square of 36x36 pixels. The images
are always scaled to 36px width or 36px height.
But the problem is, I can't find a way to center (vertical and
horizontal) the images in a square of 36px x 36px. I tried with an
extra div (for every thumb) with height and width of 36px, with text
centered and use the images as an inline element.

page: http://www.bonusontwerp.nl/dijdel/etalage/bedrijfsreportage.html

Met vriendelijke groet,
Best regards,

Jorg Tiemens

Bonus ontwerp
Frankenslag 357
2582 hp Den Haag

Tel.  +31 (0)70 33 8
Fax. +31 (0)70 30 62668

[EMAIL PROTECTED]
www.bonusontwerp.com

On 3-jan-05, at 23:05, Collin Davis wrote:

>>> page:
>>> http://www.bonusontwerp.nl/dijdel/etalage/bedrijfsreportage.html
>
> Why not save yourself some code bloat, and use a rule such as:
> div.thumbs img{width:36px; height:36px; border:0;}
> and clear all of that out of your markup?
> (such as  width="36" border="0" />)
> That would help solve the problem of typos when doing markup there
> also ;)
>
> Collin Davis - ACE, MCP
> Web Architect
> Stromberg Architectural Products
> p 903.454.0904
> f 903.454.3642
> e [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> web www.strombergarchitectural.com
>
>
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[WSG] Template StyleSheet

[Richard Czeiger]

Hi all, 
 
Trying to find examples, resources that define how StyleSheets 
should be organised. There's been dicussion of how to arrange your classes and 
IDs and I'm just wondering, what about base generic styles that don't need to be 
referenced by class or ID... Does anyone out there start with a template they 
use for all their sites and modify it? 
 
The W3 Spec for CSS2 has one for HTML4 but I don't see any 
ryhme or reason in the way it's laid it out. They're recommending that all 
developers use this stylesheet as a template. Can someone explain it to 
me?

http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-CSS2/sample.html
 
To make things fun, I've uploaded my template stylesheet for 
anyone that's interested.
www.drunkmonkey.com.au/sample.css
 
I've organised the elements in accordance with the modules 
specked out for XHTML 1.1 DocType (http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml11/doctype.html) 
- there's a couple of modular elements missing but I never use those 
anyway.
 
For the styles' properties themselves I'm guessing most people 
have their own special order. I tend to split them into three lines: 

 
    Positional Styles (display, position, 
width, height, overflow, etc...)
    Box Styles (margin, border, padding, 
background, etc...)
    Text Styles (font, size, colour, 
etc...)
 
Speaking of templates, here's an HTML Template I use when I 
build a site that a client is going to update through a WYSIWYG. I has most 
of the common HTML elements in it, so that when I apply my style sheet the 
client knows what everything is supposed to look like - very handy. Here it is 
(with a coloured version of the stylesheet):
www.drunkmonkey.com.au/sample.html
 
If you think I should change/add anything, please let me 
know.
Cheers  :o)
 
Richard
 

Re: [WSG] A land of wasted web opportunity

[Richard Czeiger]

Ummm.. hate to gripe about this but... "YOU'VE GOT TO BE KIDDING!"

I don't know about many of you guys, but I'd love my company to be a member
of the W3C.
Considering my company has about 4 members of staff, I'm wondering where we
can dig up the AUD $7765 for membership

Still, it's a good thing we have an "annual gross revenue, as measured by
the most recent audited statement, of less than $US 50,000,000".
http://www.w3.org/Consortium/Prospectus/

Who, exactly do they expect to become members?
:o(

Richard

- Original Message -
From: "Amit Karmakar" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Sent: Wednesday, December 15, 2004 10:14 AM
Subject: [WSG] A land of wasted web opportunity


An interesting read on how Australia is a wasted country!!!

http://smh.com.au/news/Next/A-land-of-wasted-web-opportunity/2004/12/13/1102
786984178.html?oneclick=true

Well I tend to disagree but I think Ivan is mainly talking about big
companies down here that are not part of the W3C. Surely that is an
area that needs focus but:

"I often hear people in Australia say they are too small to do
anything, they are happy to let the big guys in the US fight out the
standards and they will just use them"

makes me wonder if he has heard of WSG, WE04, and many others out
there... isnt it the other way around?


Regards,
Amit Karmakar
http://karmakars.com
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Re: [WSG] breadcrumbs - nice implementation

[Richard Czeiger]

You can also do this with _javascript_:Here's 
the script I use that outputs the following (check out the title 
tag!):www.grafx.com.au :: v2 :: scripting :: breadCrumbs.html
 
 
// Breadcrumbs Scriptvar path = "";var 
href = "">var s = href.split("/");for (var 
i=3;i<(s.length-1);i++) {path+=""+unescape(s[i])+" :: 
";}i=s.length-1;path+=""+s[i]+"";var url = 
"">document.writeln(url);
 
:o)
Richard- Original Message 
- From: "Terrence Wood" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>To: 
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]>Sent: Wednesday, December 15, 2004 7:36 
AMSubject: [WSG] breadcrumbs - nice implementationFollowing the 
recent discussion(s) here about breadcrumbs I thought I'd share this link to 
an interesting breadcrumb implementation (and handy snippet of 
php):http://www.de-generationx.net/blog/archives/2004/09/20/629/What 
is interesting to me about this implementation is how through the choice of 
wording the use of the breadcrumbs is explicitly navigation ("return to"), 
whereas they usually appear to be informative ("you are 
here").Terrence Wood.-- "You know you've 
achieved perfection in design, not when you have nothing more to add, but 
when you have nothing more to take away." -Antoine de 
Saint-Exupery**The 
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[WSG] Now you can Print Link URLs

[Richard Czeiger]

OK, so maybe I'm a little too bored/geeky for my own 
good...
 
The following code fixes something that's been bugging me for 
a while.
Everyone but IE seems to be able to use the "content" 
attribute in CSS.
This bit of _javascript_ basically fixes that. Read the comments 
in the code and have a play with it.
 
 
:: CODE ::
 
 
/*// Print our HREFs on Links for Print 
StyleSheet
 
There's a cool bit of CSS that shows a link's URL after 
it:
 
 a:after { content:" [" attr(href) "] " }
 
Great for Print StyleSheets, but unfortunately MSIE doesn't 
implement this.So here's some code that replicates that functionality for 
all browsers  :o)On the plus side, it also lets you style the URL 
anyway you want,instead of having it relegated to part of the link 
itself.
 
*/// 
 
function showHREF() { if 
(document.getElementsByTagName) {  >  whichLink = 
onlyContentLinks.getElementsByTagName("a");   for (var i=0; 
i   useLink = whichLink[i]; 
   showLink = 
useLink.getAttribute("href")  // This 
is for FireFox to get the whole URL if it's a link to a page within your own 
site   if (useLink.getAttribute("rel") != "external") 
{   // NOTE: this assume you are using rel="external" for 
external links   // You can swap this 
with...   // if (useLink.getAttribute("target") != "_blank") 
{// Because MSIE will 
show the full path we have to crop itcheckShow = 
showLink.lastIndexOf("/");showLink = 
showLink.substring(checkShow+1,showLink.length);// 
Because FireFox doesn't, we have to add itlastSlash 
= document.location.href.lastIndexOf("/");directory 
= 
document.location.href.substring(0,lastSlash);// 
Our funky complete URL for internal pagesshowLink = 
directory + '/' + 
showLink;   }  newSpan 
= document.createElement("span");   showTitle = 
document.createTextNode(' [' + showLink + 
']');   newSpan.appendChild(showTitle);   useLink.parentNode.insertBefore(newSpan,useLink.nextSibling);
   // Don't forget to put .printLink in 
both
   // your screen and print 
stylesheets
   
newSpan.className='printLink';  } }}
window.>
 
Richard   :o)

Re: [WSG] markup for postal addresses?

[Richard Czeiger]

I think with things like this the KISS principle comes to mind... or if you
prefer:

"Be Semantic - Not Pedantic"

:o)
R

- Original Message -
From: "James Ellis" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Sent: Tuesday, December 07, 2004 4:10 PM
Subject: [WSG] markup for postal addresses?


Hi all

I'm trying to put together some markup for a postal address:

Cosmo Kramer
123 Example St
Somewhere
Country ZIP

I've thought of an unordered list  and a definition list .
Does anyone have any ideas on the correct markup?

Cheers
James
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Re: [WSG] markup for postal addresses?

[Richard Czeiger]

Try 


address { display: block; color: etc... }


R  :o)

- Original Message - 
From: "James Ellis" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Sent: Tuesday, December 07, 2004 4:10 PM
Subject: [WSG] markup for postal addresses?


Hi all

I'm trying to put together some markup for a postal address:

Cosmo Kramer
123 Example St
Somewhere
Country ZIP

I've thought of an unordered list  and a definition list .
Does anyone have any ideas on the correct markup?

Cheers
James
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Re: [WSG] List Item Separators

[Richard Czeiger]

As a way to nicely tie up this little thread...  :o)

Once you've put your border-left 1 pixel, use the DOM to find the UL
(perhaps through an ID) and remove the first LI's border.
IF JavaScript is turned off - you're no worse off...


function listBorderKill() {
  if (document.getElementById('navigationID'))

myBody=document.getElementById('navigationID');
myListElements=myBody.getElementsByTagName("li");
myLI=myListElements.item(0);
myLI.style.borderLeft = 'none';
  }
}

window.onload=listBorderKill;


Happy landings!
Richard  :o)




- Original Message -
From: "Paul Farrell" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Sent: Monday, December 06, 2004 7:36 AM
Subject: RE: [WSG] List Item Separators


Thankyou John,

I should have known to go to ALA ! It really is a great site.

> *grin*
>
> That's what it's all about, Paul -- you're thinking along
> different lines now (no pun intended).  I've been doing the
> same thing, and I love it! :)
>
> I found the following on A List Apart that you may find
> helpful.  Search the page for "pipe" and you'll see something
> that you can use.
>
> http://www.alistapart.com/articles/taminglists/
>
> ~john
> _
> Dr. Zeus Web Development
> http://www.DrZeus.net
> "content without clutter"


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Re: [WSG] Site Check Please

[Richard Czeiger]

Thanks Ted and John  :o)

The disconnecting text is not something I can change as this design element
was specified by the client.
I've fixed the topNav -10px wierdness - only happened on the home page -
quelle bizarre!  :o)
No hover effect on action items (yet)
Top Nav landing pages do not exist (yet) - no content from client
Preloader done - thought it was part of the menu javascript

Thanks for the feedback!
Richard

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[WSG] Site Check Please

[Richard Czeiger]

Hi all  :o)
 
Would appreciate any comments.
PLEASE NOTE: Mac people - sorry not there yet, so don't even 
bother. I've served you up a crappy print style sheet  :o(
 
Here she is -
http://www.grafx.com.au/wip/withPassion/
 
Thanks in advance  :o)
 
Richard

Re: [WSG] W3C REFERER FIX?

[Richard Czeiger]

Hi All - I've actually come across this before as well.
But for my machine, this error only happens when trying to validate pages
sitting on my hard-drive.
The link is for the form that checks online pages. Upload your page to a
server and try again  :o)

You can get heaps of bookmarklets that will help you validate your page
while in development.
These access the W3C's Validate by Upload form.

Hope this helps  :o)

Richard

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Re: [WSG] Microsoft says Firefox not a threat to IE [OT?]

[Richard Czeiger]

I assumed these stats we gathered not only from their client base but from
their internet.com suite of sites - surely used by corporate and IT...  ?

- Original Message -
From: "Natalie Buxton" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: [WSG] Microsoft says Firefox not a threat to IE [OT?]


Regarding The Counter Stats though, their counters are mainly on
low-end photos of my cat and teenage I hate school angst sites, rather
than corporate sites.



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Re: [WSG] Microsoft says Firefox not a threat to IE [OT?]

[Richard Czeiger]

Remember with the W3 Browser Stats that it's mainly developers and geeks who
are checking this site out.
I'm guessing most of the public (and corporate sector that we build sites
for) are more inline with The Counter's results.

:o)

Richard

- Original Message -
From: "Anthony Timberlake" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: [WSG] Microsoft says Firefox not a threat to IE [OT?]


17.7% (sorry for the 40%)...

That's still pretty good for a company that big!

Source:
http://www.w3schools.com/browsers/browsers_stats.asp


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Re: [WSG] discussion at juicy studio: It's all in the MIME

[Richard Czeiger]

Aha! NOW i get it!
Thanks Patrick. I guess with people telling you to put inline scripts as
"text/JavaScript" and CSS as "text/css" I just assumed that the meta would
take care of it

No one said anything previously about the server bit...
That's clarified it for me.

BUT...

If, like most of my customers, theire sharing a server at some hosting
company, then it's unlikely that the host would do this to their servers...

Hmmm

Richard   :o

- Original Message -
From: "Patrick H. Lauke" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Sent: Thursday, November 11, 2004 11:15 AM
Subject: Re: [WSG] discussion at juicy studio: It's all in the MIME


Richard Czeiger wrote:
> According to W3C, 'application/xhtml+xml' is the MIME type to use.
> I've put it pages and seen it not only validate, but also display
correctly
> in IE5.0 and IE6.

If IE displayed the page, rather than prompt you to download/save the
file, then you're *not* really sending it as application/xhtml+xml.

Taking a stab in the dark, I'd guess that all you did was change the
"content type" meta to it. Well...that's not the way to do it. Your
*server* needs to be configured to send out proper
application/xhtml+xml, or - if you're using something like PHP
server-side - you need to send the appropriate headers. If all you did
was indeed just change the meta, your server is happily still sending
out your page as text/html, and that's why IE is displaying it.

If you have Firefox, simply go to the page in question and do "Tools >
Page Info". On the resulting window, look for "Type". You're more likely
seeing "text/html" there, indicating that it's not "application/xhtml+xml"

Oldie but goldie on the subject:
http://www.xml.com/pub/a/2003/03/19/dive-into-xml.html

Patrick H. Lauke
_
re·dux (adj.): brought back; returned. used postpositively
[latin : re-, re- + dux, leader; see duke.]
www.splintered.co.uk | www.photographia.co.uk
http://redux.deviantart.com

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Re: [WSG] discussion at juicy studio: It's all in the MIME

[Richard Czeiger]

Sorry guys - I'm not sure what the issue is here...

According to W3C, 'application/xhtml+xml' is the MIME type to use.
I've put it pages and seen it not only validate, but also display correctly
in IE5.0 and IE6.
So I'm having trouble understanding what the problem with using this is...
or why people 'need' to use text/html...

Can someone please clarify?
Richard  :o)

Source:
http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml-media-types/xhtml-media-types.html#summary



- Original Message -
From: "Christian Sonne" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Sent: Thursday, November 11, 2004 9:54 AM
Subject: Re: [WSG] discussion at juicy studio: It's all in the MIME


Well.. the standards are pretty clear on this subject:

http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml-media-types/xhtml-media-types.html#media-types
http://www.w3.org/International/articles/serving-xhtml/
http://www.w3.org/TR/2002/REC-xhtml1-20020801/#guidelines

among I can quote stuff like this:
"XHTML documents served as 'text/html' will not be processed as XML
[XML10], e.g. well-formedness errors may not be detected by user agents"

"The 'text/html' media type [RFC2854] is primarily for HTML, not for
XHTML"

"...many XHTML 1.0 files are actually served using the text/html MIME
type. In this case, the user agent will treat the file as HTML"

It seems pretty clear that if you serve a valid xhtml1.0 document as
text/html, it will be parsed as broken html by the standard sgml-parser.

Moreover, if the DTD is modulated (as it is if you include the dtd for
mathml) the mathml will be shown in plaintext, NOT properly rendered via
the xml-parser...

Basicly, if you can get away with sending as text/html, you really
shouldn't be using xhtml in the first place.


On Thu, Nov 11, 2004 at 09:23:43AM +1100,
[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
> I have been following this discussion (belatedly)
>
>  It's all in the MIME
> http://www.juicystudio.com/all-in-the-mime.asp
>
> first paragraph:
> " There have been a lot of articles recently about web standards; in
> particular, using XHTML and serving it as text/html. Personally, I'm not
> that bothered whether people serve XHTML as text/html, but think it's
> important that authors understand why this is wrong. Although I'm not
> bothered about content developers serving XHTML as text/html, I don't
agree
> with people encouraging content developers to deliver XHTML as text/html.
"
>
> I  wondered what other memebrs on the list thought about it and its
> implications?
>
> with regards
>
> Steven Faulkner
> Web Accessibility Consultant
> National Information & Library Service (NILS)
> 454 Glenferrie Road
> Kooyong Victoria 3144
> Phone: (613) 9864 9281
> Fax: (613) 9864 9210
> Email: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
>
> National Information Library Service
> A subsidiary of RBS.RVIB.VAF Ltd.
>
>
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>
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>

Best regards (my first post, yay!)
--
Christian Sonne aka. FreakCERS
Stud. scient. math-phys at University of Copenhagen
-BEGIN GEEK CODE BLOCK-
Version: 3.12
GM/S/CS/O d? s: a--->? C++ UL++>$ P+ L++ E--- W++ N o@ K? w !O M-- V?
PS++(+) PE@ Y-- PGP-@ t+ 5? X++ R@ tv++ b+(++) DI+>++ D G@ e>+
h! r-(--) y?
--END GEEK CODE BLOCK--
http://geeksbynature.dk
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[WSG] Current Page Link in own Class

[Richard Czeiger]

Hi all   :o)

Just thought I'd add this. Don't know if anyone's using something like this
but...
Here's how to add a class to your navigation to make the current page stand
out a bit more without putting it in the HTML.
This also assigns the class to any sublevel nav items in nested ULs.
Handy for those who dread going through every page and manually cutting and
pasting the class name onto the right menu item.

Variables:
"MyMainNavigation" is the ID of the top level  in your nav list
"currentNav" is the name of the class in your stylesheet


// Assign Class Name to Current Page in Side Nav
// This goes in your external JS file

function getCurrentPageLink() {
  navElements=document.getElementsByTagName("ul");
  for( var i = 0; i < navElements.length; i++ )

if (navElements(i).className == 'MyMainNavigation') {
  navAnchors=navElements(i).getElementsByTagName("a");
  for( var i = 0; i < navAnchors.length; i++ )

if (navAnchors(i).href == document.location.href) {
  navAnchors(i).className = 'currentNav';
}
  }
}
  }
}

window.onload = getCurrentPageLink;


Hope this helps  :o)
Richard

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Re: [WSG] links with same names

[Richard Czeiger]

Personally, coming up with links that don't end in click here at the end of
an article or section is something I find really difficult...

The whole Find out more about ... at the bottom of each page looks too
predictable.

:o(

Richard

- Original Message -
From: "Andreas Boehmer" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Sent: Thursday, November 04, 2004 9:44 AM
Subject: [WSG] links with same names


One problem I come across regularly is the issue of not giving multiple
links the same names. Let's say I have got a list of dynamically
created news items, each one of them having a summary and a link
to "read more". Obviously this is inaccessible: 10 links all
saying "read more" is not terribly helpful to anybody. But I would love
to know how people solve this problem?

Personally, I sometimes make the title of the news item the actual
link, but I feel this is not user-friendly enough.

Another option is to make the "read me" link unique by including the
title of the news item in it (e.g. "Read more about the new
Benchmarking for Educational Effectiveness Program"). The length of
this link shows for itself that it is not the best solution either.

Has anybody come up with better ways of solving this problem?



Andreas Boehmer
User Experience Consultant

Phone: (03) 9417 0468
Mobile: (0411) 097 038
http://www.addictiveMedia.com.au
Consulting | Accessibility | Usability | Development
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[WSG] Something new... LINE_HEIGHT

[Richard Czeiger]

Hi all  :o)
 
Can't find any reference to this little pecularity on the 
web...
 
OK. So I learned that it's better to use numbers rather than 
em's or % as numbers are inherited.
 
BUT! Whenever i have my line-height set to 1.4 (or 140% or 
1.4em for that matter), all the underlines of my links get squished to the 
text-bottom by 1 pixel. I know this sounds ridiculously finnicky but it can make 
them more difficult to read.
 
OK - a concession: this ONLY seams to happen in IE5. 
Unfortunately, that what my client's are running and will be viewing my nice 
little Intranet on.
 
You can check out examples here:
http://www.vfme.com/images/firefox.gif
http://www.vfme.com/images/ie50.gif
 
Has anyone else heard of this microscopicly small little 
quirk?
 
Cheers  :o)
 
Richard

Re: [WSG] how so I stop all the postings coming to my email box?

[Richard Czeiger]

no secret handshake?! I'm outta here!
 
;oP
 
Richard

  - Original Message - 
  From: 
  Peter Firminger 
  
  To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] 
  Sent: Tuesday, October 19, 2004 3:36 
  PM
  Subject: RE: [WSG] how so I stop all the 
  postings coming to my email box?
  
  Hi Casey,
   
  While answering your question I am also answering some other 
  enquiries I have had recently so it's of interest to all (otherwise I'd answer 
  off list).
   
  Joining WSG simply means joining the WSG mailing list. 
  That's all there is (well, you can also add resources to the website as a 
  member). I don't know what people expect for nothing. A badge or jacket? A 
  secret handshake?
   
  Yes, digest mode will gather all the emails sent in a day and give 
  them to you in one email. Probably a good idea to try it and see what it does. 
  Most people with any list experience know what digest mode is, so I didn't 
  think it needed explanation.
   
  It's quite clear in the terms of joining that you are joining a 
  mailing list and the join message from the list server confirms it further. 
  I'll look at the language and adjust if I think it's 
  unclear.
   
  We don't have "boards" to read, we have a mailing list and given 
  the complexity of the subject, there is often a lot of list traffic. This 
  means that it's working as intended and nearly 1100 people around the world 
  get answers to many questions and read some interesting debates on important 
  issues like the correct use of elements within HTML and XHTML (semantics) and 
  the appropriate uses of the languages.
   
  We get private emails from many members thanking us and saying how 
  much the discussions have helped them, even though they didn't ask the initial 
  question.
   
  I'm really not sure what you were expecting (boards?) but this is a 
  mailing list, and seemingly a very effective one.
  
   
  Having said all that, when I get some time (or when someone offers 
  to pay me while I do it 'cause I do have to eat and paying work comes first) I 
  am looking at adding some fields to the member database so that you can be a 
  member and not be on the mail list. 
   
  This however means you won't be able to post to the list. 
  
   
  We will give you some methods to read the list without receiving it 
  in your mailbox. These include the current methods: The members archive 
  ( http://webstandardsgroup.org/manage/archive.cfm 
  ), the public archive ( http://www.mail-archive.com/wsg%40webstandardsgroup.org/ 
  ) and an RSS feed ( http://webstandardsgroup.org/rss.cfm 
  ) you can read in something like FeedDemon. The date/time order in these is a 
  little off but they seem to work fine.
   
  No, there will not be a NewsGroup, a forum or a message board. The 
  only method of getting help will be the mailing list as that is the root of 
  this group.
   
  Personally, the mail list (with some filters in the email 
  client) works perfectly for me. Others choose a web-based email account 
  (yahoo, hotmail or gmail) for reading the list posts. I have been testing 
  the RSS feed and it's really no different.
   
  For those that have asked about list features, SmarterMail 2.0 has 
  now been released and I'll be installing it soon so we may get a better Digest 
  mode and hopefully (I haven't seen whether they implemented our suggestions) 
  see the end of HTML email on the list altogether.
   
  Finally, let me point out that Russ and I (and the other core 
  members) cannot watch the list every minute of the day. We have businesses to 
  run and clients to keep happy. So not getting an answer within an hour is 
  really not surprising from a group (not club) with no membership fees. 
  Also, we are in an entirely different time zone to you in Arizona (though our 
  server is actually in Phoenix), all the core group are in eastern 
  Australia.
   
  Welcome to the group Casey, I hope this clears up your 
  questions.
   
  Regards,
   Peter Firminger
  


From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] 
[mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of SRGSent: 
Tuesday, October 19, 2004 4:19 AMTo: 
[EMAIL PROTECTED]Subject: [WSG] how so I stop all the 
postings coming to my email box?


Hi, 
I just JOINED your group last night and now find my email box bomb-barred 
with to many messages / how do I stop them and 
still remain a member of your group. I  simple want to read the 
messages from your boards. Is that what the Digest Mode does, because that 
is not clearly indicated as to its actual function. 
 
Thanks 
for your help. 
Casey