Re: [WSG] Certified Usable
Disclaimer: my company Gruden, is partnered with PTG. We've enjoyed working with them for a number of years and I think the results have been good. Anyway enough of that rubbish. I don't really know much about Certified Usable so I won't way into that debate - maybe someone from PTG could jump on and answer any questions about that. I do however know about their site as I was involved in putting it together. Robbie: Yes the drop down level nav requires Javascript, however you can access every page on the site without Javascript. Click a top level item in the header and you get the sub items down the left. Steve: Link is fixed. Kay Steve: Yup guilty on the validation stuff. However I am going to blame the CMS. The site is currently running Shado 6 which has some glitches such as: - limited access to the head section (hence link in the body bodgy XHTML on some meta elements), - the insertion of proprietary elements (shadodms) and - issues with the WYSIWYG editor (brs, image attributes, etc..). We've been pestering Straker (the makers of Shado) about this for years and to their credit they have listened - there is a more recent version of Shado (version 7) which fixes these issues. We are planning on upgrading the PTG site to this version some time in the next 3 to 6 months. Disclaimer 2: Gruden are also Shado partners. On 3/20/06, Kay Smoljak [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On 3/20/06, Steve Olive [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Their page is generated from the Shado CMS built by Straker Interactive Ltd so I assume getting real WAI validation would be nearly impossible for their own web site. Just a quick note: I've played a little with Shado CMS and I'm fairly certain that it allows you to create your templates however you wish - I'd be willing to bet that this is one case where the problems *cannot* be blamed on the CMS. -- Kay Smoljak http://kay.zombiecoder.com/ ** The discussion list for http://webstandardsgroup.org/ See http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm for some hints on posting to the list getting help ** -- Mark Stanton Gruden Pty Ltd http://www.gruden.com ** The discussion list for http://webstandardsgroup.org/ See http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm for some hints on posting to the list getting help **
Re: [WSG] jump menu method
You must have been using GET rather than POST.Spider's won't submit forms that us POST, but they have every right to follow forms that use GET. http://www.xml.com/pub/a/2002/04/24/deviant.html http://www.intertwingly.net/blog/2005/05/06/This-Stuff-Matters -- Mark Stanton Gruden Pty Ltd http://www.gruden.com ** The discussion list for http://webstandardsgroup.org/ See http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm for some hints on posting to the list getting help **
Re: [WSG] Screenshot tool
www.browsercam.com On 6/20/05, Colm Walsh [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I'm trying to locate that really handy site that allow you to preview screenshots of your webpage on all browser/platform combinations. Does anyone know the URL. Regards, Colm -- Mark Stanton Gruden Pty Ltd http://www.gruden.com ** The discussion list for http://webstandardsgroup.org/ See http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm for some hints on posting to the list getting help **
Re: [WSG] Gnews - THREAD CLOSED
Guys I really can't see how this dicussion relates to web standards. This is an ad for a product. Sure the output validates and there are W3C logos in the footer, but seriously -- Mark Stanton Gruden Pty Ltd http://www.gruden.com ** The discussion list for http://webstandardsgroup.org/ See http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm for some hints on posting to the list getting help **
[WSG] Fwd: [cfaussie] ANZ Regional User Group Meeting Next Wednesday 16th Feb 6pm for 7pm Star City
Hey Guys It might seem a little presumptuous posting this as its not purely standards related, but Russ was invited to speak on behalf of the WSG at this event last year and I think it really helped us reach a new audience and build some momentum. The WSG founders greatly appreciated this show of support for our fledgling group at the time - now its our turn to return the favour :) For those of you in Sydney, the Macromedia ANZ Regional User Group Meeting is on at Star City next Wednesday night. This is Day 0 of the MXDU conference and is a free/public event. Last year Sean Corfield, Director of Architecture at Macromedia, discussed the challenges of attempting to implement web standards on a site the size of macromedia.com - he is speaking again this year (about something or other) so it's bound to be interesting. Plus you've got two of the main Flash heads in world speaking about all things Flash and ready to answer your most difficult questions. See below for full details. --- Hello All, Another reminder, next Wednesday evening join us at Star City Darling Harbour, venue of MXDU, for the best speaker line up at any Macromedia User Group on earth this year! Mike Downey - Flash Product Manager, Macromedia Mike Chambers - Flash Developer Relations Manager, Macromedia Sean Corfield - Director of Architecture, Macromedia Richard Turner-Jones- Queensland MMUG Manager Join us as we discuss the next Flash player, the most interesting CF ideas blogged in the last year and some very cool Flash applications written for Airservices Australia that show pilots where all the restricted airspaces (and presumably surface to air missile installations) are. Speakers don't interest you? Well needless to say the cash bar opens at 6, so they should be interesting by 7. See you there! Robin Hilliard ANZ Macromedia User Group Coordinator --- -- Mark Stanton Gruden Pty Ltd http://www.gruden.com ** The discussion list for http://webstandardsgroup.org/ See http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm for some hints on posting to the list getting help **
Re: [WSG] Standards?
Try it - watch their eyes glaze as you show how the competitors' sites don't validate. Of course if you talk them about it in terms of standards and validation and doctypes they are going to get bored and stop listening. The overall language and structure of Russ's article is not appropriate for client (sorry Russ) and I don't think its meant to be. Its aimed at us developers. Read that Adaptive Path article - or just read the headings: - Speed Development - Simplify Maintenance, Increase Opportunity - Open Up Access Options - Reduce Bandwidth Costs - Improve User Experience Whats there for a client not to like? I think we probably agree here - the technical detail of hows it done is your problem, not theirs. They just want to know about the end result in practical terms they can understand. -- Mark Stanton Gruden Pty Ltd http://www.gruden.com ** The discussion list for http://webstandardsgroup.org/ See http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm for some hints on posting to the list getting help **
Re: [WSG] Standards?
Hey Bob Hey - she'll be expecting me to reduce my prices next year! :-) Yeah well these two ways to approach it - give her more for less because of the efficiency gains hope you benefit in terms of greater customer respect/loyalty or stuff around doing things the hard way so you can spend enough yours to give her a big bill. Each to their own :) Not relevant - small site, with folk increasingly being on a high speed line. Here in UK (where it's called Broadband) the user pays a standard fee, no matter how much/how long he/she uses it. (that's for small/simple sites, of course) You haven't used dial up in a while yet have you? What percentage of your users would you say are on broadband vs dial up at the moment? And in two years? - Improve User Experience How? Speed? Broadband again - makes it MUCH less of an issue. No I think this is talking about general usability improvements. Case in point - today I was sitting in a meeting room, with the sun streaming in, demoing an app on a projector to some collegues - I couldn't read the stuff up on the screen properly so I bumped the font size - everything still looked worked ok. The sites I was building 3 years ago were not that flexible. Turning that on it's head, what's left for a client to get excited about? A lot IMHO. Yeah, absolutely. That's the bottom line. Just thought I'd share the conversation for interest/provocation. No worries mate - enjoy a good civil arguement (especially when I'm right :) -- Mark Stanton Gruden Pty Ltd http://www.gruden.com ** The discussion list for http://webstandardsgroup.org/ See http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm for some hints on posting to the list getting help **
Re: [WSG] Search Engines and CSS
Google don't always use the Google bot user agent string - one of their techniques is to use an IE user agent string from a different subnet and compare it to what Google-bot gets. They also have very good methods of rendering content to analyse its visual output. This covers javascript tricks, css tricks and white-on-white stuff. Basically don't waste your time trying to out smart a company with that many PHDs and that much RD budget. There are good ways of getting results in Google without silly tricks that will get you banned. Write good content, get good links. I really don't know if this thread is relevant on this list though - if you are seriously interested in discussing google - go to the Google News forum on Web master world. -- Mark Stanton Gruden Pty Ltd http://www.gruden.com ** The discussion list for http://webstandardsgroup.org/ See http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm for some hints on posting to the list getting help **
Re: [WSG] Is sending abusive spam doing standards good or harm?
Hi All The WSG Core group are with you guys 100% here. No foul language, abuse, negativity or other offensive behaviour will be tolerated on the list. We do our best to keep an eye on things and deal with in appropriate behaviour by contacting those concerned directly. If you have any specific concerns please forward them to info@webboy.net or [EMAIL PROTECTED] Just one other thing I like to point out - the page in question has been online for a lot longer than the WSG list and, to the best of my knowledge, it was not written by a list member. However posting the link to the list was probably not the best idea. -- Mark Stanton Gruden Pty Ltd http://www.gruden.com ** The discussion list for http://webstandardsgroup.org/ See http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm for some hints on posting to the list getting help **
Re: [WSG] XSLT on client-side (was: making money out of web standards)
I've got to say I completely agree with Kornel here - XSLT is very useful, but keep it on the server side. Its all about what you send over the wire. By all means create XML (schemas) for your own use in your own applications - these may have very precise semantic meaning in your environment, but they are truly meaningless in the wild. Perform your transformations at your end and send your content over the wire in some widely understood vocabulary such as HTML/XHTML. Arguments about bandwidth are really not relevant in this context. I could, for example, send all my content through to the browser in a special XYZ format that I have devised and that happens to work in a couple of browsers. This format may have huge advantages in terms of bandwidth and rendering time, but it is still a Very Bad Idea (TM) because it breaks the whole concept of web standards. Optimise your bandwidth by all means, but draw the line at sending non-standard formats (like proprietary XML vocabularies) over the wire. On another note, personally I'm a little tired of people thinking of HTML/CSS as the *only* web standards - it is so much broader than that. HTTP, ECMA Script, P3P, SVG (and to a lesser extent XSL) are all true web standards and are completely relevant on this list, IMHO. -- Mark Stanton Gruden Pty Ltd http://www.gruden.com ** The discussion list for http://webstandardsgroup.org/ See http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm for some hints on posting to the list getting help **
Re: [WSG] HOW DO I KNOW THAT MY HTML FILE HEADER IS BEING SENT CORRECTLY?
Hi Charles Download Firefox (if you haven't already) and then install the LiveHTTPHeaders plug in (http://livehttpheaders.mozdev.org/). Restart Firefox and LiveHTTPHeaders will then be under the tools menu and all your headers will be revealed. -- Mark Stanton Gruden Pty Ltd http://www.gruden.com ** The discussion list for http://webstandardsgroup.org/ See http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm for some hints on posting to the list getting help **
Re: [WSG] W3C what are they doing ?
Hi Berry A few points here: - I doubt XHTML 2/DOM 3 will hit the main stream for a number of years (at least 5). So I wouldn't start worrying about it now. - I don't think XHTML 2/DOM 3 have be designed with developers in mind. These guys are not thinking about our immediate needs - they are thinking about the direction of the web in the future. - HTML4 works and will continue to work - why upgrade sites for the sake of it if there is no specific benefit that you want? - No tool (browser) will ever follow a specification exactly. - The W3C is a fairly open organisation and if you are interested in the direction of the standards they are producing, sign up to the relevant mailing lists and watch it happen in real time. - There is the spec, there are the various browser implementations and then there is the real world. These three things are all pulling in slightly different directions, but they do also influence each other and help each other along. Lastly I'd say that nothing much has changed - this situation has been around for ages. Standards get written by very smart academics in lab coats, browser companies implement the specs to a greater or lesser extent and we go on using the web. its not perfect, but it has got us where we are today and I certainly don't think there is some crisis looming. -- Mark Stanton Gruden Pty Ltd http://www.gruden.com ** The discussion list for http://webstandardsgroup.org/ See http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm for some hints on posting to the list getting help **
Re: [WSG] Standards Macromedia Contribute
Hey David You cannot edit pages that use server side includes. To be able to see the page in it's entirety, you have to instead use Dreamweaver Templates of Library Items. Huh? You can't edit content that is being included, so if I have mypage.shtml and includes header.html, I can edit the content of mypage but not header. Personally I think that makes perfect sense and is highly desirable. Apart from that SSI works very well with Contribute 3. Doing this then ties you to Macromedia's proprietary standards , rather than standards compliant XHTML. You make it sound like the two are mutually exclusive, which is very misleading. There is nothing about the Dreamweaver template system that doesn't conform with XHTML. Dreamweavers templating works through the use of comments - nothing more. -- Mark Stanton Gruden Pty Ltd http://www.gruden.com ** The discussion list for http://webstandardsgroup.org/ See http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm for some hints on posting to the list getting help **
Re: [WSG] Standards Macromedia Contribute
Hi Sammy ***disclaimer*** I work for a Macromedia partner. I do lots of MM related stuff and like *some* of their gear a fair bit (esp. Coldfusion and Contribute). ...But I have my WSG hat on when on this list - not my MM hat. * Yes I've done a fair bit of this over the past 6 months or so. We have an intranet/wiki thing we use as a documentation tool in the office and it is completely Contribute based and valid XHTML. The system depends on parsing the pages server side (when the user performs an edit) to pull out meta data and bits of content to feed into the search, syndication feed and so on. Basically a poor mans CMS with no database. So if the validity breaks the site breaks. This is actually the first use I have ever found for XHTML, apart from this site I am HTML4 all the way. I can say that it is possible to enter invalid mark up into C3, but you have to try pretty damn hard (i.e. put an unescaped ampersand in the URL dialogue). On the whole it gets things right and forces XHTML. The other thing I was trying to test out with this intranet app was the CSS support. This has been a major problem in Contribute for us in the past. For our intranet I pulled a design off CSS Zen Garden, tweaked it a little, replaced the images and went for it. CSS support in Contribute 3 is *much* improved (Dreamweaver engine... yadda, yadda). The editing mode still has relatively minor problems with some position/padding/margin/width stuff but its workable (previously is was horrible). I've started writing up on some of the stuff I've done with Contribute at http://www.macromedia.com/devnet/contribute/articles/cps_cf.html. That article covers about the first 1/3 of what I have been messing with, there should be more to come early next year. I've also got a demo version of the sample app online, if anyone wants to take me at my word contact me off list :) Also I can tell you Jesse's comments are pretty much on the money in terms for rendering, C2 used to use Opera for its internal browser but they changed to IE on PC and god knows what on the Mac in C3. -- Mark Stanton Gruden Pty Ltd http://www.gruden.com ** The discussion list for http://webstandardsgroup.org/ See http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm for some hints on posting to the list getting help **
Re: [WSG] i want to unsubcribe plzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz
Yeah - we get the point guys - THREAD CLOSED On Thu, 02 Dec 2004 15:49:29 -0800, Francesco [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On Thu, 02 Dec 2004 21:10:35 +, Patrick H. Lauke [EMAIL PROTECTED] said: Sorry, but...idiot! My sentiments exactly. What is up with people who write pl instead of please? Aaarrgh. Francesco Sanfilippo, Developer / Designer --- Blackcoil Productions - http://blackcoil.com URL123 Link Service - http://url123.com ** The discussion list for http://webstandardsgroup.org/ See http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm for some hints on posting to the list getting help ** -- Mark Stanton Gruden Pty Ltd http://www.gruden.com ** The discussion list for http://webstandardsgroup.org/ See http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm for some hints on posting to the list getting help **
Re: [WSG] why oh why
Hi Clayton I think we have assertained that the issue is not present in Firefox 1. This thread has now been closed - please do not respond further. -- Mark Stanton Gruden Pty Ltd http://www.gruden.com ** The discussion list for http://webstandardsgroup.org/ See http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm for some hints on posting to the list getting help **
Re: [WSG] Correct use of fieldset
Many thanks for your advice on the subject. I guess kind of got caught up in the part that said the proper use of this element makes documents more accessible. I've never actually sat down and properly read through these documents cover to cover and so I've started picking a different chapter each month to read through. When I got to the fieldset section I got a little over-excited :-) Don't worry about it mate - this stuff takes a long time to sink your teeth into - just keep posting questions when you're not sure of something... as long as its not about font sizes :). Also bear in mind that there are rarely absolute right and wrong answers and its easy to get trapped in a cycle of navel gazing and splitting hairs - check http://www.simplebits.com/notebook/2004/08/04/sq.html for beautiful example. -- Mark Stanton Gruden Pty Ltd http://www.gruden.com ** The discussion list for http://webstandardsgroup.org/ See http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm for some hints on posting to the list getting help **
Re: [WSG] Customers who won't pay
Hi Tash THREAD CLOSED Firstly I want to close this thread because this is not appropriate to WSG (sorry). Can anyone help me with the line i should take? Anyone have this type of experience before? Am embarrassed by my naivety. Sorry if this is not appropriate for WSG. I think this has probably happened to everyone on this list in one way or another at some point. There is not much you can do, unless you want to start talking to lawyers. Firstly - stop working immeidately, don't be nasty, just state that you need to renegotiate before continuning. Then treat the whole thing as a learning experience and never start work on a project until you have a documented signed off specification for what you are building and a contract that commits the client to paying for it. -- Mark Stanton Gruden Pty Ltd http://www.gruden.com ** The discussion list for http://webstandardsgroup.org/ See http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm for some hints on posting to the list getting help **
Re: [WSG][THREAD CLOSED] Customers who won't pay
For the second time THIS THREAD IS CLOSED - please respond off-list if you wish to continue the discussion. -- Mark Stanton Gruden Pty Ltd http://www.gruden.com ** The discussion list for http://webstandardsgroup.org/ See http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm for some hints on posting to the list getting help **
Re: [WSG] Correct use of fieldset
Hi Brad Welcome to the list. According to the HTML 4.01 DTD, Fieldset can live outside a form block. But it you find yourself putting outside one you're probably due for a sanity check. Are you using it for semantic purposes or just for presentational purposes? If you're using it for semantic purposes (to group a set of fields together), you'll probably want to check why you are putting form fields outside a form - they are pretty useless out there! If you're using it for presentational purposes, then the hardcore standards crew will probably put a hex on you and your family. This is basically the same as using tables for visual layout. If you can do the same thing using more appropriate elements and some CSS, you'll be blessed with eternal good karma and will be worshipped as a standards guru by the millions of list members. Enjoy. -- Mark Stanton Gruden Pty Ltd http://www.gruden.com ** The discussion list for http://webstandardsgroup.org/ See http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm for some hints on posting to the list getting help **
Re: [WSG] Correct use of fieldset
Sorry missed one part of your post: For example, can it be uses to group a number of related links together? I'd suggest that Fieldset in this context is meaningless - its not ArchorSet, its FieldSet - its for form fields. Use a list (ul or ol) for links. -- Mark Stanton Gruden Pty Ltd http://www.gruden.com ** The discussion list for http://webstandardsgroup.org/ See http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm for some hints on posting to the list getting help **
Re: [WSG] Print styles for IE - Document too wide
Sorry again... every column is as skinny as it can get. I've got about 80 columns in the table :( -- Mark Stanton Gruden Pty Ltd http://www.gruden.com ** The discussion list for http://webstandardsgroup.org/ See http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm for some hints on posting to the list getting help **
Re: [WSG] Print styles for IE - Document too wide
Yeah everything is as low as it can go. Considering each column has a minimum of 1 character+padding+margins I cant see any possibility of all 80 columns fitting on 1 A4 page I don't expect it to, but it would be nice if IE would allow stuff that slips off the page horizontally to come out on a new page (like excel does), rather than just cutting it off. -- Mark Stanton Gruden Pty Ltd http://www.gruden.com ** The discussion list for http://webstandardsgroup.org/ See http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm for some hints on posting to the list getting help **
[WSG] Print styles for IE - Document too wide
Hi All I've got an odd case of an intranet page that generates a very wide report (table). This page is generally printed rather than being viewed on screen. The table is slowly growing width wise as more data is added - it is now so wide that even when printed in landscape the table gets cut off at 3/4 of the width. What I am hoping for is some way to get the printer to break the page up both vertically and horizontally - in the way the excel does, but for some reason this doesn't happen, it just prints pages 1-5 vertically and whatever runs horizontally off the page just gets lost. Does anyone have any ideas no how to fix this issue? -- Mark Stanton Gruden Pty Ltd http://www.gruden.com ** The discussion list for http://webstandardsgroup.org/ See http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm for some hints on posting to the list getting help **
Re: [WSG] Print styles for IE - Document too wide
Thanks Neerav I've got rid of everything I can and reduced the fonts as much as I dare and its still 300px too wide for a landscape A4. I've tried setting widths to auto, 100%, px - nothing makes a difference. -- Mark Stanton Gruden Pty Ltd http://www.gruden.com ** The discussion list for http://webstandardsgroup.org/ See http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm for some hints on posting to the list getting help **
Re: [WSG] [OT] NZ vs Aust
Hey Mike Going this far off topic on this list is a bannable offence - your only option now, if you wish to stay on this list, is to set up a WSG meeting in NZ. (Only kidding about the banning, but please give the meeting idea some thought.) -- Mark Stanton Gruden Pty Ltd http://www.gruden.com ** The discussion list for http://webstandardsgroup.org/ Proud presenters of Web Essentials 04 http://we04.com/ Web standards, accessibility, inspiration, knowledge To be held in Sydney, September 30 and October 1, 2004 See http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm for some hints on posting to the list getting help **
Re: [WSG] Web Accessability, SEO, Bookmarking - mod_rewrite
I think that only for stolen sites comment is a little off. For example I'll often develop something on my local machine on a URL like http://localhost/project-name and then deploy it on its own URL. base is invaluable in this sort of situation. -- Mark Stanton Gruden Pty Ltd http://www.gruden.com * The discussion list for http://webstandardsgroup.org/ See http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm for some hints on posting to the list getting help *
Re: [WSG] Web Accessability, SEO, Bookmarking - mod_rewrite
Mordechai: base affects what the leading slash actually points to. You could have a little app in http://localhost/myApp and code all your pages up to use img src=/myApp/images/myImage.gif, but when you move the app into another directory (eg. http://localhost/yourApp) you then need to do a find replace on every URL in every document site wide to change this path. If you are using base from day one you only need to change the path within one tag. James: Yes - I know you can do this and we usually do, http://projectName.gruden.com for staging and http://project.gruden.int for internal and http://projectName.machineName.gruden.int for actual developers desktops. I guess the key thing in both of these cases is that base gives you a flexibility that you would otherwise not have. Its not the answer to every problem and its not something you MUST DO EVERYTIME - its just there for our convinience. And sometimes its pretty handy. -- Mark Stanton Gruden Pty Ltd http://www.gruden.com * The discussion list for http://webstandardsgroup.org/ See http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm for some hints on posting to the list getting help *
Re: [WSG] FYI
Also - http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2004/07/26/1090693888524.html Firefox has been getting some good press recently. -- Mark Stanton Gruden Pty Ltd http://www.gruden.com * The discussion list for http://webstandardsgroup.org/ See http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm for some hints on posting to the list getting help *
Re: [WSG] Critique please
Hi Richard I really like it - maybe three small comments, all very minor: 1) You're using inline styles in a number of places. 2) div id =' footnav' - there is a space in front of a number of your id attribute values. Not sure how this would affect CSS, JS, etc.. 3) indent is a poor choice for a class name. Describe *why* the data in presented the way it is, rather than describing the presentation. 9.5 out of 10. Good stuff. -- Mark Stanton Gruden Pty Ltd http://www.gruden.com * The discussion list for http://webstandardsgroup.org/ See http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm for some hints on posting to the list getting help *
Re: [WSG] I've done it again ...
Hey Kay I have a wiki on my site, so that I can categorize and annotate my bookmarks. It's become a huge organic sprawling beast in less than a year, but *so* useful. The resources section of the WSG site is meant to be just this type of beast (http://webstandardsgroup.org/resources/) except that is nice public and administrable by all WSG memebers. Come on guys - lets make it a worth while resouce! Cheers Mark -- Mark Stanton Gruden Pty Ltd http://www.gruden.com * The discussion list for http://webstandardsgroup.org/ See http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm for some hints on posting to the list getting help *
Re: [WSG] Hiding email address from spambots with CSS
HI All My thoughts on this issue are here: http://www.mail-archive.com/[EMAIL PROTECTED]/msg05509.html If doesn't really matter what obfuscation method you use: - If its visible to users spam harvestors can get it if they really want to. - The more you hide it (via js, css or what ever else) the more you lose on accessibility. Spam has to be stopped on delivery - hiding email addresses is a bandaid solution and a poor one at that. Cheers Mark -- Mark Stanton Gruden Pty Ltd http://www.gruden.com * The discussion list for http://webstandardsgroup.org/ See http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm for some hints on posting to the list getting help *
Re: [WSG] Hiding email address from spambots with CSS
Of course. The point is just to make it more difficult. A car alarm doesn't stop car theft, but with all else equal, the thief will choose one without an alarm. That's fine true but by making it difficult for spam bots you also make it difficult for your users. -- Mark Stanton Gruden Pty Ltd http://www.gruden.com * The discussion list for http://webstandardsgroup.org/ See http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm for some hints on posting to the list getting help *
Re: [WSG] [THREAD CLOSED] Re: web standards related rss feeds?
Hi Neerav I think this is an excellent idea I've got lots of great feeds that I'd like to share I'm sure others do to. The reason I'm closing it is because I don't think the list is the best place for this resource - I'd like to find somewhere more permanent on the site for it. I'm going to either open up a discussion for this or create resource section on the site for it - will post back here asap with the details. Cheers Mark * The discussion list for http://webstandardsgroup.org/ See http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm for some hints on posting to the list getting help *
Re: [WSG] Re: web standards related rss feeds?
Hey All I've creaked a Standards related feeds category in the resources on section on the site - http://webstandardsgroup.org/resources/#cat32. Feel free to add links to RSS Atom feeds there. I've taken the liberty of adding the ones already posted to this thread under the names of those who posted them. Cheers Mark -- http://www.gruden.com * The discussion list for http://webstandardsgroup.org/ See http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm for some hints on posting to the list getting help *
Re: [WSG] Must Read - THREAD CLOSED
Sorry to be a wet blanket guys but this has little or no bearing on web standards. From: http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm The mail list does not cover: * Non-Web Standards related issues and support * Discussion of server-side scripting beyond that directly involved with Web Standards * Discussion of content management/web publishing system issues beyond those directly involved with Web Standards (there is a CMS list for that purpose, see the resources section for details) I think this topic would come under all of those headings. Can you wrap up the thread now please. Cheers Mark * The discussion list for http://webstandardsgroup.org/ See http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm for some hints on posting to the list getting help *
Re: [WSG] Standard Hacks?
I agree with Kay, avoid them when possible, Certainly don't take the approach of including a bunch of them in every CSS regardless of whether you need them or not. If you are after more specific information on hacks (or filters as they are also known), check out http://www.google.com/search?q=css+hacks Cheers Mark -- Mark Stanton Technical Director Gruden Pty Ltd Tel: +61 2 9299 9462 Fax: +61 2 9299 9463 Mob: +61 410 458 201 http://www.gruden.com mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] * The discussion list for http://webstandardsgroup.org/ See http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm for some hints on posting to the list getting help *
[WSG] HTML email - mac testers please
Hi All I've got an HTML email that I need to prepare for a client. The mockup can be seen at: HTML: http://mark.gruden.com/beerworth/ CSS: http://mark.gruden.com/beerworth/lib/main.css We didn't design it, we just did the HTML CSS work. An initial review by the designers (MAC users) has resulted in them coming back saying there are padding/margin issues on Safari 1.1.1 and IE 5.2. Bascially the blue area on the right side (the bit starting with You are subscribed to...) has a couple of pixels white space at the top bottom. This blue should be sitting flush with the header footer. I've tested it on IE 5.1.7 (it looks fine), but don't have access to either of these other browsers. I've got two questions: 1) What mail client are available on the MAC and what browsers do they use for rendering HTML content? 2) What is causing this issue and what can I do to fix it? Thanks in advance. Mark -- Mark Stanton Technical Director Gruden Pty Ltd Tel: +61 2 9299 9462 Fax: +61 2 9299 9463 Mob: +61 410 458 201 http://www.gruden.com mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] * The discussion list for http://webstandardsgroup.org/ See http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm for some hints on posting to the list getting help *
Re: [WSG] HTML email - mac testers please
Thanks guys Let me clarrify something quickly - I hate HTML email and I'm pretty sure I will burn in hell for my sins against the STMP protocol or whatever, but... I have a problem here that I need solved. I know HTML rendering in email client like lotus notes is very poor and I realise that multi-part emails are a great way to go, but... my current scope of work is to get a good enough version of the HTML layout complete. I'm not designing or running the campaign so most of these decisions are not mine to make. I guess I'm just interested what rendering engine do 90% on a MAC use when they look at an HTML email and then testing in that environment. Cheers Mark -- Mark Stanton Technical Director Gruden Pty Ltd Tel: +61 2 9299 9462 Fax: +61 2 9299 9463 Mob: +61 410 458 201 http://www.gruden.com mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] * The discussion list for http://webstandardsgroup.org/ See http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm for some hints on posting to the list getting help *
Re: [WSG] HTML email - mac testers please
Big thanks Nick, I've gone for a table based layout for these reasons, CCS-P in mail clients is asking for trouble. I guess the next step is removing all my CSS and just going the old school route as suggested by Ben. If most Mac users are on Mail or Outlook (which I guess means Safari IE) at least I know what I'm aiming for. Thanks for testing in those browsers - I'll go back to the designers and see what they think. Cheers Mark -- Mark Stanton Technical Director Gruden Pty Ltd Tel: +61 2 9299 9462 Fax: +61 2 9299 9463 Mob: +61 410 458 201 http://www.gruden.com mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] * The discussion list for http://webstandardsgroup.org/ See http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm for some hints on posting to the list getting help *
[WSG] Min-Width IE Workaround ?
http://www.google.com/search?q=min-width+IE * The discussion list for http://webstandardsgroup.org/ See http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm for some hints on posting to the list getting help *
Re: [WSG] OT: time delay for messages to appear on the list
Guys Please address all issues related to the running of the list to [EMAIL PROTECTED] We are really trying to keep the noise on this list down to a mimimum and keep discussion to web standards related issues. If everyone could help it would be great and the list managers wouldn't feel so grumpy all the time. Cheers Mark - Mark Stanton Technical Director Gruden Pty Ltd Tel: +61 2 9299 9462 Fax: +61 2 9299 9463 Mob: +61 410 458 201 http://www.gruden.com * The discussion list for http://webstandardsgroup.org/ See http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm for some hints on posting to the list getting help *
Re: [WSG] Anti-spam mailto encoders using Character Entity Evasion
Guys hate to rain on your parade but if your browser can understand that obfuscation what makes you think that a email address harvestor is not going to be able to? These guys are writing complex viruses that harvest email addresses directly from people's Outlook contact lists, surely they can understand a little javascript and work with character entities. Sorry but I think you are kidding yourselves. Obfuscation does not work, replacing @ with at or appending .spam does not work and makes it harder for dummy user to actually use the web, putting emails addresseses in images is anti-accessibility (unless of course you also put the email address in the alt tags). The best method of hiding email addresses is with a contact form, but even then you are losing out because you are forcing a user to contact you via their website (i.e. stopping them from writing down your email or adding it to their contacts and contacting you at leisure). Emails addresses should be public information (like phone numbers). Spam isn't going to be stopped by hiding email addresses, you've got to stop it on the way into your mail box. Cheers Mark * The discussion list for http://webstandardsgroup.org/ See http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm for some hints on posting to the list getting help *
Re: [WSG] Should web standards cost more?
Hey Jackie I agree with you and think maybe I just didn't explain myself properly. A guy in high school who has made a site for his uncle and one for his soccer team is not going to be able to charge the same rate as someone who has been developing site professionally for a number of years. I completely agree with that point: rate should be based on quality of workmanship. This covers any service industry; architects, doctors, tilers, masseurs and web developers. But a developer's rate should be based on a broad range of factors, from the ability to guide the client through the process of designing a solution that fits their requirements through to the ability to implement the design effectively using whatever technologies are suitable. Web standards are a small but significant aspect of this and web standards are not always the right fit for every client. The idea that you can charge more for a site because it validates is missing the point entirely. Your site might be better than the one created by export to web from photoshop, but standards probably have very little to do with this difference. I'm sitting here now after work has officially finished and I'll be here for a while yet. Its not an exceptional day, I spend a lot of time outside of work hours learning. Tonight I might learn something that I don't know now and I might end up using that in a site I build tomorrow, but should I charge more for it? No way. The site might be of a slightly higher quality and all of these incremental changes in quality may add up to more happy clients and better sites in a portfolio. One day this might all add up to the point where I (or my accountant) realise that I can safely increase my rate. Or it might result in me winning a job because of my standards experience that I wouldn't have otherwise got. There's my reward. But until then I'll keep it where it is and keep learning how to build better sites. Knowledge of standards is very important but if you go to Bob's Pizza shop and think you can explain why you are 20% more expensive than that guy down the street by telling him the site you make will validate you're in for a rude surprise. Cheers Mark * The discussion list for http://webstandardsgroup.org/ See http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm for some hints on posting to the list getting help *
Re: [WSG] Should web standards cost more?
Hey Guys This is a service industry, provide cost based on how much the will cost you to do (i.e. long the work takes you to do). Implementing standards may save you time or add extra development time. For example I feel that CSS based design takes less time and as such should cost less that a design that has font tags hidden graphics everywhere. Sure the client gets a better end result, but this is a competitive advantage to you not something that you want to be charging more for. A site can be made significantly accessibile by just developing it properly in the first instance. No extra hours should be required to get pretty close to A level compliance. If AAA level compliance is a stated requirement for a project then extra time will be needed to put in the extra coding and testing effort - this should be costed on just like any other work. Learning curve is your problem, hours spent on development is your clients problem. Cheers Mark * The discussion list for http://webstandardsgroup.org/ See http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm for some hints on posting to the list getting help *
Re: [WSG]
Hi Taco I really don't know the answers to your questions, but thats never stopped me from trying to answer them in the past so why now? But before I do can I just point out that this is coming off the top of my head from 5 minutes research on the web. I'm a geek, not a lawyer. Are there currently any laws in Australia that dictate a website should be accessible to vision impaired people etc.? There is no Section 508 type law that relates specifically to the web, but there are general laws that cover any form of discrimination against people with disabilities. If so, to what websites does it apply and has anyone taken any websites to court over not being accessible? I don't think anyone could give you a 100% accurate answer on that, I think a good rule of thumb that government funded sites need to be more careful than privately funded ones. By the letter of the law I think any site that can be shown to be discriminatory can be sued, however the only case I know of is the SOCOG one. What I could find so far only the following: As I mentioned this is the only case law that I am aware of on this topic. A quick google search turned up heaps more on this case, most interesting was http://www.hreoc.gov.au/disability_rights/decisions/comdec/2000/DD000120.htm which seems to be an official court document relating to the complaint the judgement. From this I found that the case was decided based on the DISABILITY DISCRIMINATION ACT, so it was not any web related law at all. Are there any links to what standards certain websites need to apply? I don't think any easy answers to these questions have been published. You might want to check out Roger Hudson's presentation from one of the first WSG meetings (http://webstandardsgroup.org/go/resource4.cfm). You might also want to consider coming to Web Eseentials; both Roger Bruce are presenting at the conference (http://we04.com/presenters.cfm) and answers to your questions alone would really be worth the ticket price. Cheers Mark * The discussion list for http://webstandardsgroup.org/ See http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm for some hints on posting to the list getting help *
Re: [WSG] Tables are bad because...
Hi John I don't want to weigh into this argument of tables right or wrong - I think all the angles are being covered pretty well at the moment. But I read your post a couple of things jumped out at me. On the whole it's a good read I agree with a lot of what you are saying bit this section: But unfortunately an article like yours is not read by them in the spirit in which you intended, it is read as a vindication of their position. See, Andy Budd agrees with me. So rather than seeing something like at times, it may be necessary to use a non standards based approach to achieve an outcome within certain constraints, and that is ok they see all those standards zealots really don't know about the real world so everything they say can safely be ignored. Then Dave Shea, and Nick Bradbury and others weigh in nominally agreeing, making it all like its all so reasonable and realistic and essentially you reinforce the context of the discussion about web standards. ..kind of scared me a little. Could what you are saying be distilled into Don't raise controversial complicated issues in public because they might be misinterpreted by fools and used contrary to their original meaning? That's how I'm reading it. Andy, Dave Nick's comments will most likely be misunderstood or misrepresented by some, but I imagine they are going to help others. Regardless of whether people agree or disagree its about getting people to think about the issue and that has to be a good thing. However even this is beside the point. Andy has expressed an opinion, anyone and everyone is more than welcome to debate the ideas he's raised (as I know you have), but I thinks its rude to criticise the fact that he expressed the opinion in the first place. Argue the points but, please don't stifle the conversation itself. I'm not trying to pick a fight - I mean the above in the most respectful way. Cheers Mark * The discussion list for http://webstandardsgroup.org/ See http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm for some hints on posting to the list getting help *
Re: [WSG] height problem
Hi Razvan I'd suggest the best option would be to make it a background image on the body tag. Your body tag is going to be your top level containing block so it will always stretch to the height of your content. relative height: properties are always going to be relative to your viewport or visible area. Heights are always going to be troublesome - see my post at http://www.mail-archive.com/wsg%40webstandardsgroup.org/msg04815.html for a bit more information on this or the stack of height related posts we've had on the list recently at http://www.mail-archive.com/wsg%40webstandardsgroup.org/. Cheers Mark * The discussion list for http://webstandardsgroup.org/ See http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm for some hints on posting to the list getting help *
Re: [WSG] Vertical Height Alignment Issues
Hi Please see the list guildines at http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm. If you want a solution to your problem the guidlines will explain what information you are going to need to provide in order to help us help you. Cheers Mark * The discussion list for http://webstandardsgroup.org/ See http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm for some hints on posting to the list getting help *
Re: [WSG] height problem
Thanks Patrick Yes you are right about html being the top level container, but I guess I was thinking about visible area - I never realised that you could style the html. Will try this out for sure. Cheers Mark * The discussion list for http://webstandardsgroup.org/ See http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm for some hints on posting to the list getting help *
Re: [WSG] title question
I tried, in all my accessibility lovingness to add title tags to some images on a page today and it is telling me that the title tag is not allowed by the dtd and it won't parse the page. I'm assuming that you are talking about the title= attribute rather than the title tag? I tried the link you provided got a session timeout error. Can you double check it and provide one that works so I can look into the problem for you? Cheers Mark * The discussion list for http://webstandardsgroup.org/ See http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm for some hints on posting to the list getting help *
Re: [WSG] What am I doing wrong with the CSS here
Hi Brian I've checked your site in both IE Firebird and have run it through the CSS HTML validators (one HTML page fails), but I still can't see the problem. Descriptions such as everything has gone wacky, things to display completely differently and broken something somewhere are not really helping me to identify what you are talking about. Please try to be more descriptive if you really want to get your problem solved. Firstly use a nice descriptive subject line so that people can quickly decide whether or not they are able to assist. Also in the body of your message its important that you go through some basic steps to make sure you're communicating your problem correctly. I find that http://www.mozilla.org/quality/bug-writing-guidelines.html is an excellent resource on how to effectively describe bugs and problems. Also please check out the Asking for help section of this list's guidelines (http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm). http://diveintomark.org/archives/2003/05/05/why_we_wont_help_you might also be helpful. Cheers Mark * The discussion list for http://webstandardsgroup.org/ See http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm for some hints on posting to the list getting help *
Re: [WSG] [OT] UniversalHead blog
Hey Guys All I get is an advertising page. Looks as though your domain name registration hasn't taken yet. You should be able to set up your own local DNS entry to do the job in the interim i, all we need is the IP address from Peter a text editor. 1) Find a file on your computer called hosts (usually in the C:\WINDOWS\system32\drivers\etc directory on windows). 2) Open the file in a text editor 3) There should be a line that says: 127.0.0.1 localhost copy paste this line onto a new line. 4) Replace the 127.0.0.1 bit with the IP address you want to point to replace the localhost bit with the domain name you want the to point to. 5) Save close the file you should be right to go. See http://help.hardhathosting.com/question.php/11 for more instructions. Cheers Mark * The discussion list for http://webstandardsgroup.org/ See http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm for some hints on posting to the list getting help *
Re: [WSG] What am I doing wrong with the CSS here
Hey Brian
Okay in Moz everything on the MAIN page
http://www.mosincorporated.com/site2/main.php is okay except for the white
field with the scrollbars - this div expands pit about 8 pixels further than
it should - the white of the menu side should be used as a guide as to what
this side should display like. Look Using IE to see how the bottom should
line up.
Other way around (I think) - Moz is getting it right, IE is getting it
wrong. But yes there is a difference of exactly 10px there between the
two browsers, but I don't think the difference is where you think it
is. If you overlay two screen grabs one over the other you will notice
that the width from the extreme left of the white area to the scroll
bars on the right (total width of d5) is identical in both browsers.
The difference in how they are rendering is that IE is expanding the
containing divs, while Firefox is not.
I you measure the width of d1 in Firefox its exactly what you are
saying it should be in the CSS, but in IE its 10px wider. I am
guessing that this is because your math is out slightly somewhere -
haven't found exactly where yet :)
Try reducing the widths of your inner divs, one at a time moving
outwards and you should find the culprit. Alternatively take a
screenie measure it all up in photoshop.
I just reduced the width of d5 to 528px and that seemed to fix it but
that might just be luck. I also did the height of d5 down to 429px and
this fixed Moz but IE is now too short (edit: no the right col is too
long). My rule of thumb is don't use vertical layouts in CSS... ever.
This probably has nothing to do with your issue but its worth knowing
anyway.
Why?
Firstly past CSS specs have been pretty ambiguous in their definition
of how to handle it (I stopped paying much attention about 12 months
ago so I don't know about 2.1 3 are like in this regard).
Secondly browser support is rubbish so you are asking for a world of
pain hacks to get anything to look right.
Thirdly there is a theoretical reason that I understood once, I've
just spent 30 minutes trying to understand it again but I think I'm
more confused than ever now. I know its something to do with viewport
visible height of the document vs. the total height of the document
the fact that web documents are streamed to the browser and
rendered on the fly. If you are interested in looking further, check
out http://ln.hixie.ch/?start=1070385285count=1,
http://weblogs.mozillazine.org/dave/archives/2003_05.html#003191,
http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-style/2003Aug/0040.html and
http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-style/2001Jul/0028.html
In IE the Main http://www.mosincorporated.com/site2/main.php the right side
displays as it should and the bottom of the left side is correct, however
the top of the left side drops about 8 pixels as the blue and orange bars
should line up perfectly as they do on the top in Mozilla
The height adjustment I mentioned earlier actually goes some way to
fixing this. I think the right hand col was too pushing up too high,
rather than the left one being too low.
I also had to adjust the height of d8 down by 10px in IE to get the
bottoms lined up, but this borks Firefox. Maybe a math mistake? Maybe
a browser bug? A hack should get you round it if you are only
interested in these two browsers.
Again ...vertical layouts are best avoided.
For the index page or entrance page http://www.mosincorporated.com/site2/ ,
IE diplays as it SHOULD display - In Mozilla, my two areas of single line
text are dropping about 15 pix or so lower than it does in IE. Additionally
the photo creeps up a couple of pixels, the lighter blue bar under the
picture I think is in the right spot if the phot were but the lighter blue
bar to the left of the photo has a left border that it is NOT supposed to
have.
You really like to make life difficult for yourself don't you :)
I'm sorry I can''t get my head around that at this time of night -
excessive use of negative margins can cause fits.
I did make a slight improvement by adding:
p {margin:0;padding:0}
but that's not the whole story. IE Moz are going very different
things with that d9 div. Try using some background colours on your
div's p's to see where the browsers think things actually are.
I hope that is detailed and accurate enough - I look forward to the help
Huge improvement!
Apart from the above - can I just make some general comments about
your code approach in general.
- The web is never going to be pixel perfect, getting the type of
designs that you are going for working consistently across even the 5
most common browsers is going to be extremely difficult. This is not
print, this is the web - content is king, design is sugar. Keep things
as simple as possible.
- Don't use pt's for font sizes for screen - they are meaningless. A
pt is 1/72 of an inch, inches don't translate onto screens at all. As
far as I'm concerned - in a perfect world - pixels are the right unit
of
Re: [WSG] MovableType virgin
Hi Andy No offence, but discussion of specific server side products is off topic. Please check out the some the MT resource sites (http://www.google.com/search?hl=enlr=ie=UTF-8q=moveable+type+%28resources+OR+tutorial+OR+learning%29btnG=Search) or the MT homepage (http://www.movabletype.org/frequently_asked_questions.shtml). Cheers Mark * The discussion list for http://webstandardsgroup.org/ See http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm for some hints on posting to the list getting help *
Re: [WSG] Please take a look at this page.
Hi Kevin I don't have a access to NS6 on a mac, but just a friendly word of advice: Please try to be more descriptive if you really want to get your problem solved. Firstly use a nice descriptive subject line so that people can quickly decide whether or not they are able to assist - I would suggest Link colour in NS6/Mac not working would be good for this message. Also in the body of your message its important that you go through some basic steps to make sure you're communicating your problem correctly. I find that http://www.mozilla.org/quality/bug-writing-guidelines.html is an excellent resource on how to effectively describe bugs and problems. Also please check out the Asking for help section of this list's guidelines (http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm). http://diveintomark.org/archives/2003/05/05/why_we_wont_help_you might also be helpful. There are a bunch of people here who will bend over backwards to help, but we need you to give us all the right tools first. Cheers Mark * The discussion list for http://webstandardsgroup.org/ See http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm for some hints on posting to the list getting help *
Re: [WSG] HTML/XHTML, CSS Validation Tools on Linux !
I know the W3C validator is available as a Debian package (the link checker is also part of the package) - we've got it running locally here. The source of the HTML CSS validators are available if thats the sort of thing you are looking for. http://validator.w3.org/source/ http://jigsaw.w3.org/css-validator/DOWNLOAD.html Cheers Mark * The discussion list for http://webstandardsgroup.org/ See http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm for some hints on posting to the list getting help *
Re: [WSG] HTML/XHTML, CSS Validation Tools on Linux !
Sorry - one other thing I forgot to mention... Tidy: http://www.w3.org/People/Raggett/tidy/ http://tidy.sourceforge.net/ Cheers Mark * The discussion list for http://webstandardsgroup.org/ See http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm for some hints on posting to the list getting help *
Re: [WSG] Question on javascript
I agree with Ryan - coding for specific browsers is a futile excerise. We do use javascript quite a bit but its usually to provide additional funcitonality to users who are able to handle it. The empahsis is on people still being able to use the site without javascript. This could include things like having the text search inside a search box, but then removing it when the user clicks into the search box or providing tree style navigation. Javascript is ok, but must be used with care. I think the best approach is to aim at the DOM ECMA standards (O'Reilly have a great book on this) and not getting trapped into browser specific or IE only scripting. Cheers Mark * The discussion list for http://webstandardsgroup.org/ See http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm for some hints on posting to the list getting help *
[WSG] XHTML considered useful
Well at least someone has found a use for it - http://diveintomark.org/archives/2004/05/02/user-friendly-feeds Cheers Mark PS Sorry for being a troll, but i couldn't resist - please take it in good humour. * The discussion list for http://webstandardsgroup.org/ See http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm for some hints on posting to the list getting help *
Re: [WSG] XML Includes?
Hey Scott The doctype that you are using: !DOCTYPE html PUBLIC -//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd; doesn't contain the elements that you are using in your code: window titlebarmycontent/titlebar contentmycontent/content /window ...so your document is invalid. I'm not going to jump up down about it must be valid or you will burn in the infernal pits for eternity, but I can say that if its not valid you're going to have a bastard of a time debugging it working out whats a bug in your code whats a bug in a browser. So how do you get this stuff to validate? XHTML's got a feature that allows you to specify your own doctypes to extend the default set of tags attributes, or to override what is already there. I don't know a huge amount about this but some googling could turn up some useful stuff. The main reason why this feature has been discussed over the past year or so is that XHTML doesn't have a target attribute on a tags so people have been tweaking doctypes to add it in stay valid. But I'm pretty sure that in most cases creating your own doctype is not going to be the easiest or best idea. My gut feel is that a bit of XSL is probably more suited to what you are trying to do. Could you convert: window titlebarmycontent/titlebar contentmycontent/content /window into: div class=window div class=titlebarmycontent/div div class=contentmycontent/div /div using XSL? Cheers Mark (who will be in training until tuesday so don't expect any quick follow up). * The discussion list for http://webstandardsgroup.org/ See http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm for some hints on posting to the list getting help *
Re: [WSG] Improved digest format
I believe there is an Atom feed that you might find more useful. Most blog readers should handle it. http://discuss.webstandardsgroup.org/atom.xml Cheers Mark * The discussion list for http://webstandardsgroup.org/ See http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm for some hints on posting to the list getting help *
Re: [WSG] Compliant tree menu
There is some pretty nice code available at http://www.qld.gov.au/web/cue/template/implementations.html that sounds close to what you want. It doesn't remember last state but it does generate some very nice tight simple markup, works across a range of browers and degrades well in the absences of js and/or css. Cheers Mark * The discussion list for http://webstandardsgroup.org/ See http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm for some hints on posting to the list getting help *
Re: [WSG] New Site launch: Jands
Hey Peter I haven't checked it out in depth, but I just wanted to say that from the quick glance I had, it looks stunning the code is pretty sharp to boot. Big congratulations! Cheers Mark * The discussion list for http://webstandardsgroup.org/ See http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm for some hints on posting to the list getting help *
RE: [WSG] XHTML Form + Label - Errors
Hey Chris The DTD says: !ELEMENT form %form.content; So form can only contain elements in the %form.content entity. !ENTITY % form.content (%block; | %misc;)* So form.content means the %block entitiy the %misc entity. !ENTITY % block p | %heading; | div | %lists; | %blocktext; | fieldset | table Keep following this sort of logic through the DTD. !ENTITY % heading h1|h2|h3|h4|h5|h6 !ENTITY % lists ul | ol | dl !ENTITY % blocktext pre | hr | blockquote | address ...and... !ENTITY % misc noscript | %misc.inline; !ENTITY % misc.inline ins | del | script So after all that we can deduce that you are only allowed the following tags immediately inside your form: p, div, fieldset, table, h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6, ul, ol, dl, ins, del, script. If you read the validator message again: 'Line 36, column 18: document type does not allow element label here; missing one of ins, del, h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6, p, div, address, fieldset start-tag' This is exactly what its saying (almost). If you change: label for=nameName:/label input id=name name=name type=text /br / label for=emailEmail Address:/label input id=email name=emailtype=text /br / To: plabel for=nameName:/label input id=name name=name type=text //p plabel for=emailEmail Address:/label input id=email name=emailtype=text //p You should be right! Cheers Mark -- Mark Stanton Technical Director Gruden Pty Ltd Tel: +61 2 9299 9462 Fax: +61 2 9299 9463 Mob: +61 410 458 201 http://www.gruden.com * The discussion list for http://webstandardsgroup.org/ See http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm for some hints on posting to the list getting help *
RE: [WSG] XHTML Form + Label - Errors
Ok It didnt work because I have a textarea Which isnt allowed. What do you mean its not allowed? Why is it not legal? How can I add the FORMS module to my XHTML setup? Adding modules to solve your problems is *not* the answer - don't get carried away with it. Things have been set up as they are for very good reasons don't change the rules until you fully understand them why they are there. I just havent worked out where you find out, how to add it all... because the above string confuses me... Read the How do I read a DTD section of the spec, then read the DTD. Everything you need to know is at w3c.org, it just takes time trying to understand it all. Cheers Mark -- Mark Stanton Technical Director Gruden Pty Ltd Tel: +61 2 9299 9462 Fax: +61 2 9299 9463 Mob: +61 410 458 201 http://www.gruden.com * The discussion list for http://webstandardsgroup.org/ See http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm for some hints on posting to the list getting help *
[WSG] CSS the Linux documentation project
http://ask.slashdot.org/askslashdot/04/03/30/0041253.shtml?tid=106tid=126t id=185tid=95 Very interesting - even if just to demonstrate how little most people understand about CSS. Cheers Mark -- Mark Stanton Technical Director Gruden Pty Ltd Tel: 9956 6388 Mob: 0410 458 201 Fax: 9956 8433 http://www.gruden.com * The discussion list for http://webstandardsgroup.org/ See http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm for some hints on posting to the list getting help *
RE: [WSG] Serving XHTML as application/xhtml+xml
Oh dear... I didn't want to get into this argument again. Did you know that your statement XHTML is currently a waste of time. It might be useful in a few years promotes the use of IE? It certainly doesn't promote the use of standards-compliant XHTML browsers like Mozilla/Firefox/Opera. For the first time, these browsers have a technological advantage over IE and you are missing it. Do you happen to work in Redmond by any chance? Rubbish. I use Firefox as my primary browser actively encourage the use of it and other standards compliant browsers where ever I can. My mention of IE was a specific answer to a specific question about IE. My comment XHTML is currently a waste of time. It might be useful in a few years has almost nothing to do with IE. Please read http://www.hixie.ch/advocacy/xhtml. Anyway, too many people focus on browsers and their ability to consume XHTML. Today, the real benefit of XHTML is on the content production side. Sorry - I thought that thread was about which mime types to use in serving XHTML to browsers? Content production is not relevant on this list. Please use the [EMAIL PROTECTED] list if you which to discuss content production and the like. Without XHTML, the average Web developer could not parse content for re-purposing because HTML makes parsing difficult. Here is an example of how some of our customers build Web sites (it would be impossible for them to do this if the content was in HTML): they have a single script (PHP, ASP, etc) that provides the layout of the page and sucks-up content from a data store. Depending on the type of document (FAQs, press release, staff list, etc), they run an XSLT to re-format the content. For example, for FAQs, the XSLT goes through each header, anchors it and creates a list of hyperlinks at the top of the page to jump to each FAQ. You can only do this if you author your content in XHTML. We're off topic here, but HTML 4.1 is only ever one step away from XHTML (HTML Tidy jTidy) so your argument about things being impossible if you're using HTML is incorrect. People have been taking this approach (markup - transform - publish) to content management for years (see DocBook, SGML, etc...), it nothing new. Some alternative approaches: http://www.biglist.com/lists/xsl-list/archives/199905/threads.html#00229 http://www.google.com/search?q=wordML+XSL http://www.google.com/search?q=docbook+XSL XSLT is very useful, but it relies on XML not XHTML. So maybe You can only transform content with XSLT if you author your content in XML. might be more accurate? I do understand your point and in the situation that you have mentioned XHTML is useful. But this is only one specific scenario and its not relevant to the original post. Mark, you made a bold statement, so I will counter with a statement just as bold - Authoring content in HTML immediately devalues that content, because as soon as you capture content in HTML it become legacy data, difficult to parse and difficult to re-purpose. Ok, maybe I should have said HTML 4.1 is the right choice for *delivering web documents to web browsers* at the moment. I don't care what format or systems people use to author and manage their content - I am simply talking about what should be reaching browsers. Regards, -Vlad XStandard Development Team The first standards-based XHTML 1.1 WYSIWYG editor I like your product very much (I downloaded a copy the other day), but I find it a little ironic that you point the finger at me saying I work for Redmond when your product based entirely on Microsoft's ActiveX technology. I don't want to argue about any of this, its been done 100 times before I certainly don't want to get personal. The only reason I am writing this email is that I expressed an opinion and I don't particularly enjoy having it misrepresented. I am not anti XHTML in any way - I've followed its development closely for a couple of years am very excited about the possibilities that has opened up. I don't feel the web is ready for it yet. Cheers Mark -- Mark Stanton Technical Director Gruden Pty Ltd Tel: 9956 6388 Mob: 0410 458 201 Fax: 9956 8433 http://www.gruden.com * The discussion list for http://webstandardsgroup.org/ See http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm for some hints on posting to the list getting help *
RE: [WSG] Serving XHTML as application/xhtml+xml
Hi I haven't bothered messing with this yet - but Simon Jessey has: http://keystonewebsites.com/articles/mime_type.php http://jessey.net/blog/2003/sep/ I have created an index.xhtml file, changed the content in it to application/xhtml+xml (meta content=application/xhtml+xml; charset=iso-8859-1 / ) and uploaded it. Meta tags are almost useless for this sort of stuff. HTTP Headers are where the action is. Now, IE is served the xhtml file as text/html and Mozilla is served application/xhtml+xml. Is it? You can test both files with IE and Mozilla, for instance: http://excellentsite.org/index.shtml http://excellentsite.org/index.xhtml Seems to be working - Firefox is getting served application/xhtml+xml for the second link. Could it be this way? If yes, why doesn't IE load the xhtml page ?! IE has broken mime support. Don't take this too seriously but I'm just going to add my usual disclaimer: + XHTML is currently a waste of time. It might be useful in a few years. + All the features that XHTML adds are currently supported so badly by user-agents at large that there is almost no point in using it. + HTML4.1 is the right choice for web documents at the moment. This argument has been outlined at length on this list so search the archive at: http://www.mail-archive.com/wsg%40webstandardsgroup.org/ if you are interested in more details. However having said that I think the approach you have taken (serving as xml mime type where possible) is one of the more responsible ones at the moment. I still don't think its worth the effort though. Cheers Mark -- Mark Stanton Technical Director Gruden Pty Ltd Tel: 9956 6388 Mob: 0410 458 201 Fax: 9956 8433 http://www.gruden.com * The discussion list for http://webstandardsgroup.org/ See http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm for some hints on posting to the list getting help *
RE: [WSG] css from photoshop file?
You'd be fine doing the templates from supplied photoshop files? I guess this would mean replicating the look of a PSD file with css code? Would this kind of client expect standards compliant css or rigid WYSIWYG works in IE code, any tips to ensure that the result will be decent css are appreciated. Tip #1 - make sure the psd files come from a designer that understands CSS. Many designers come from a print or CDROM background, and will design web pages using what they know about their preferred media. If your designer understands the limitations and advantages of CSS you should be fine. If they design it like a brouchure or a CDROM you're in big trouble. Cheers Mark -- Mark Stanton Technical Director Gruden Pty Ltd Tel: 9956 6388 Mob: 0410 458 201 Fax: 9956 8433 http://www.gruden.com * The discussion list for http://webstandardsgroup.org/ See http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm for some hints on posting to the list getting help *
RE: [WSG] Usability Week 2004
Thanks - that will also give us all time to have some good long discussions with our bank managers about that second mortgage :) 3 days with Jakob = $20K (I'm guessing this is US dollars). Sorry - I miss read the site - the 20K is for one of Jakob's staff coming to your office for 3 days and helping your staff. Now where's that rock I was hiding under Cheers Mark -- Mark Stanton Technical Director Gruden Pty Ltd Tel: 9956 6388 Mob: 0410 458 201 Fax: 9956 8433 http://www.gruden.com * The discussion list for http://webstandardsgroup.org/ *
RE: [WSG] opinions on use of css shorthand properties
I agree with Russ - it's a mostly a matter of personal preference. Initially shorthand can be confusing but with time it becomes the easier option. One more thing: font-variant: normal; font-style: normal; font-stretch: normal; font-size-adjust: none These are all completely redundant because they are the default values. Unless you have reset these values previously, you don't need to set them to their default values. Cheers Mark -- Mark Stanton Technical Director Gruden Pty Ltd Tel: 9956 6388 Mob: 0410 458 201 Fax: 9956 8433 http://www.gruden.com * The discussion list for http://webstandardsgroup.org/ *
[WSG] More links for light reading
How to debug CSS: http://www.mezzoblue.com/archives/2004/03/10/css_problems/index.php Google goes anti semantic (h1's are to easily abused): http://www.sitepoint.com/article/brandy-google-update Cheers Mark -- Mark Stanton Technical Director Gruden Pty Ltd Tel: 9956 6388 Mob: 0410 458 201 Fax: 9956 8433 http://www.gruden.com * The discussion list for http://webstandardsgroup.org/ *
RE: [WSG] Definition list wish
What would the process be for making such a change? Sign up to the [EMAIL PROTECTED] list. But a word of warning, be ready to have your idea ripped to shreds. Don't be dishearted by this process, every idea is ripped to shreds on that list - the good ones come through the other end and are included in the spec. Its kind of a litmus test I guess. Read the spec understand it. Read the up coming XHTML specs too (http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml2/mod-list.html#s_listmodule) make sure that your issue hasn't already been fixed. Search the list archive (http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-html/) and make sure you've read all related discussions (see list below). Get all your ducks in a row and have all your arguments ready - then post your suggestion. Consider this: you want to put a border around all your individual terms, some of which might have multiple definitions. Using some pretty esoteric CSS3 selectors you might be able to do it, but for the most part, you're just out of luck. This argument will not hold any water on this list - borders are a presentational issue. The HTML people make a point of refusing to consider anything remotely presentational. I can see your point but you're going to have to express it in a sense that is relevant to semantic mark up or take it to the CSS list. What is the point of the dl tag? I think you are looking for something that will perform a similar function - how can you express that without talking about borders? I seriously think one of the best ways to get a real solid grip on HTML CSS is to sign up to the W3C lists and just read the conversations that take place there. But please, think very carefully before posting to these lists, the list members take a pretty dim view of poorly thought out or off topic posts, how to questions are also frowned on. They will make sure you get this message if you stray away from what they aiming for. Nice people - its just that they take their work very seriously. Some definition list related threads: http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-html/2004Jan/0031.html http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-html/2003May/0316.html http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-html/2003May/thread.html#227 http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-html/2003Nov/thread.html#18 http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-html/2002Oct/0009.html http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-html/2002Aug/thread.html#240 Cheers Mark -- Mark Stanton Technical Director Gruden Pty Ltd Tel: 9956 6388 Mob: 0410 458 201 Fax: 9956 8433 http://www.gruden.com * The discussion list for http://webstandardsgroup.org/ *
RE: [WSG] Purpose of this mailing list
Hi Mike The purpose of this list is two fold: QA stuff and general web standards discussion/news updates. We have tried to create a culture on this list that is very topic based rather than creating a really chatty community with lots of OT posts about what people got up to on the weekend. So basically we want this list to contain anything and everything as long as its on topic. I realise that there are other CSS QA lists out there, but this list is different in the sense that it is really the extension of a group and the group's meetings. I would say that at the moment the membership of the list these days far exceeds the attendance of our meetings, but the list has evolved out of the group group meetings. People who can't make it to meetings are always welcomed encouraged to organise meetings in their areas. We are very aware of list volume issues and understand that this is a touchy subject for some, but at the same time getting too restrictive will alienate other list members. I've got a graphic artist in here who has similar complaints to yours - he finds Russ's emails with lists of links very interesting because they give him a good idea of issues that he has to design around and techniques that we can be employing. But he doesn't code CSS all day so he doesn't really get much from the how do I get this float working posts. What would you think about a blog RSS feed for news stuff (or would this just be another CSS blog)? Or two lists, one for news and one for implementation issues? Anyway its an open issue at the moment - we're still trying to find the right mix. Cheers Mark -- Mark Stanton Technical Director Gruden Pty Ltd Tel: 9956 6388 Mob: 0410 458 201 Fax: 9956 8433 http://www.gruden.com * The discussion list for http://webstandardsgroup.org/ *
RE: [WSG] Purpose of this mailing list
Hi Taco
[CSS]
[WSG] Web Standards
[OT] Off topic
{TOT] Totally Of Topic ;-)
If you're in the mood to write a [OT] or [TOT] message - please don't. Mail
volume is an issue and the list mums (Russ Peter) have made call - keep it
on topic or post else where (like CFAUSSIE where this stuff is ok).
I'm not meaning to be harsh but we need to be considerate of those that are
concerned about mail volume.
Cheers
Mark
--
Mark Stanton
Technical Director
Gruden Pty Ltd
Tel: 9956 6388
Mob: 0410 458 201
Fax: 9956 8433
http://www.gruden.com
*
The discussion list for http://webstandardsgroup.org/
*
[WSG] The AIMIA Awards
Hey All You might remember that a few weeks back there was a post about the AIMIA awards (http://www.mail-archive.com/[EMAIL PROTECTED]/msg01675.html), and that I kicked off a bit of a discussion about the apparent lack of recognition for standards in the awards process. Anyway I got a call the other day from the project manager of the awards we had a bit of a chat about the current state of the awards, the comments on the WSG list and what can be done in future to address the concerns that we had. Just goes to show... be careful of what you ask for - you might just get it ;) So I was thinking I'd put it to you lot - what can AIMIA do to encourage truly high quality, accessible and standards compliant design? Points to consider are: - This is AIMIA, they cover Web, CDRom, DVD, Games, Kiosks and so on, so saying make sure all contestant must be AAA will be missing the point. - Entry is limited to AIMIA members, I have no idea how big or small this group is but we have to deal with the fact that we are dealing with a limited subset of sites. - Judges come from a range of backgrounds (advertising, project management, design and development) - how could they effectively work technical criteria into the judging process? - Things that matter to coders don't always matter to normal people (even though we know coders are always right :) - We've got four pillars of standards (accessibility, validation, separation of content presentation and semantics) - which ones are important in this context and how do you judge each? I want to pool any the ideas we get and send something semi-formal back to AIMIA. We can't just sit here complaining like those two old men in the Muppets, they've given us an opportunity to influence this awards process - lets see what we can come up with. Please think in the context of the existing awards (http://www.aimia.com.au), look at what they already have in place and consider how this can be adjusted rather than designing a new awards process from scratch. Be practical put some thought in. They have shown us some respect by looking for our feedback, I'm sure we can make a valuable contribution here. Cheers Mark -- Mark Stanton Technical Director Gruden Pty Ltd Tel: 9956 6388 Mob: 0410 458 201 Fax: 9956 8433 http://www.gruden.com * The discussion list for http://webstandardsgroup.org/ *
RE: [WSG] Table style definition lists
Did you check www.enpresiv.com using my UL implementation? No good for ya? In a couple of respects - it doesn't cut it for what I'm trying to do. Sorry I should have provided a bit more back ground. I'm working on an intranet I want all my view pages and add/edit forms to be presented as two column layouts (captions on the left values on the right). I've got to account for pretty much any combination of values in both the left right columns. Basically I want it to behave like a two column table with vertical-align top on each cell, however I think that dl/dt/dd is probably a better way to code this because you don't have to worry about rows and its more semantically correct (IMHO). You're page presents correctly with the existing content, but its not flexible in that if you have long values in the left column things start to go wrong. For example if you replace span class=addressTitleaddress/span with span class=addressTitlethis here is the address of the office/span you get text overlapping :( Also its not an anything but a table situation, its more just that I'd ideally like to use a definition list. I'm pretty sure I could trick a definition list to behave like your setup but I'd still have the problem I mentioned before. I appreciate the suggestion, but I don't think its going to work for me this time. BTW, were you at MXDU (I recognize the name Gruden)? I was there, I presented on Central. If you were there, we never got to meet :( Yeah I was there all right :) I missed your central preso - was busy learning about Java CF. In all honesty I'm going through a bit of an anti-flash stage at the moment - mostly because I got lumped with something I couldn't really do and tortured myself with it for about 3 weeks - the memory still causes me to break out in cold sweats. There were so many people at MXDU that I wanted to meet but never got the chance. Maybe next year it'll run for a week :) Cheers Mark -- Mark Stanton Technical Director Gruden Pty Ltd Tel: 9956 6388 Mob: 0410 458 201 Fax: 9956 8433 http://www.gruden.com * The discussion list for http://webstandardsgroup.org/ *
RE: [WSG] Table style definition lists
Yup great illustration - that's the problem in a nut shell. Here's a simple demo page for this (which doesn't use a DL). The problem is that IE stacks up the right side boxes with no gap between them, while Firefox aligns the tops of the right side boxes with those of the left. I don't have a fix for it, I'm just trying to help illustrate the problem. Cheers Mark -- Mark Stanton Technical Director Gruden Pty Ltd Tel: 9956 6388 Mob: 0410 458 201 Fax: 9956 8433 http://www.gruden.com * The discussion list for http://webstandardsgroup.org/ *
RE: [WSG] Table style definition lists
Mate - I've been looking at br hr - but I've got to ask myself why bother with definition lists at all if I've got to hack to get it to look right. Thanks for all your help - I think its time to go back to tables vertical alignment :( Cheers Mark -- Mark Stanton Technical Director Gruden Pty Ltd Tel: 9956 6388 Mob: 0410 458 201 Fax: 9956 8433 http://www.gruden.com * The discussion list for http://webstandardsgroup.org/ *
RE: [WSG] A bit OT: Narrrgh - pulling out hair
The secure insecure message means that you have an https page that is referencing some material (an image, style sheet or whatever) over normal http. To test that this is the problem visit the page over http instead of https - no message. I had a quick look over the page and couldn't see anything obvious but I'll hazard a guess that it's flash related. Maybe: codebase=http://download.macromedia.com/pub/shockwave/cabs/flash/swflash.ca b#version=6,0,0,0 Or plug inspage=http://www.macromedia.com/go/getflashplayer; !-- looks like a typo here anyway? -- Or maybe its an external swf being loaded into the movie? I don't know enough about flash https to be able to say more than that though. Cheers Mark -- Mark Stanton Technical Director Gruden Pty Ltd Tel: 9956 6388 Mob: 0410 458 201 Fax: 9956 8433 http://www.gruden.com * The discussion list for http://webstandardsgroup.org/ *
RE: [WSG] A bit OT: Narrrgh - pulling out hair
Think about it - if I made a page that was https then had an iframe that was http from another server The user thinks they are getting https but in fact they are not. IE does go over the top though - anything linked will do it (images, etc..). Cheers Mark -- Mark Stanton Technical Director Gruden Pty Ltd Tel: 9956 6388 Mob: 0410 458 201 Fax: 9956 8433 http://www.gruden.com * The discussion list for http://webstandardsgroup.org/ *
RE: [WSG] XHTML Basic 1.0
Yer... XHTML Basic - the only time I've seen it used is in DENG (http://claus.packts.net/deng/, http://mozquito.markuplanguage.net/). Basically this is a light weight browser written in Flash. It supports CSS1 2, SVG, XForms, XFrames and XHTML Basic. So why basic not strict or transitional - I guess these guys weren't keen to have to support all the features of XHTML when people only really use about 30% of it. The emphasis in DENG is that its very light weight - so this kind of makes sense. Basic is there to cater to this type of scenario. Cheers Mark -- Mark Stanton Technical Director Gruden Pty Ltd Tel: 9956 6388 Mob: 0410 458 201 Fax: 9956 8433 http://www.gruden.com * The discussion list for http://webstandardsgroup.org/ *
RE: [WSG] Aural Property in CSS2???
There's lots of cool stuff in CSS 2, but the spec itself is broken, I can't remember if it ever even became a W3C recomendation or not. CSS 2.1 is in its final stages now and its specifically designed to fix the problems in the CSS 2 spec. In light of this - I don't think any browsers have actually made any sort of real effort to completely support CSS 2 yet. So in short - forget CSS 2 - it died before it ever got off the ground. CSS 2.1 is where its at but assuming that it becomes a recommendation sometime in the next few months - I doubt you will see any browser fully support it within the next 12 months and you are looking at a number of years before you see broad based support. Another interesting point is that (AFAIK) screen readers have some of the worst CSS support out of any of the browsers barring lynx (which doesn't support CSS at all). I think most of the aural stuff in CSS is aimed a screen readers and other audio agents (like voicemail services) not your common visual browsers. On a kind of side topic there was a really interesting blog post a while back where a guy had a chat to the IE dev teams and managed get them to take feature requests via his blog. The requests are listed at: http://scoblecomments.scripting.com/comments?u=1011p=6183link=http%3A%2F%2 Fradio.weblogs.com%2F0001011%2F2004%2F01%2F14.html%23a6183. Well worth a read. Mostly people asked for tabbed browsing, PNG support and CSS 2 support. The most interesting comment in there is one from Tantek Celik. When Tantek talks about CSS - its best to really listen very closely because he is at the center of it all - he was formally in charge of CSS support in the IE/Mac team and is now part of the CSS working group at the W3C. Do a search for tantek read his comment - there is lots of interesting stuff in there. Cheers Mark -- Mark Stanton Technical Director Gruden Pty Ltd Tel: 9956 6388 Mob: 0410 458 201 Fax: 9956 8433 http://www.gruden.com * The discussion list for http://webstandardsgroup.org/ *
RE: [WSG] Aural Property in CSS2???
still its not CSS2 then is it??? Yes it is. if its not controlled by the browser but rather external software.. A screen reader is a browser in a sense, actually user agent is more acurracte I guess, but the point is they do read web pages. i was looking for the CSS code to play a WAV file anyone? Barking up the wrong tree mate - you're going to need an external player for that. I'd suggest Flash as the best option. 2 points: + Do you really need sound? IMHO decorative sound like background music on web pages sucks. Remember those pages in the late ninties with midi loops? cringe/ + If you really need sound - don't have it play automatically. Make the user click a play button or something. (Just a personal opinion). Cheers Mark -- Mark Stanton Technical Director Gruden Pty Ltd Tel: 9956 6388 Mob: 0410 458 201 Fax: 9956 8433 http://www.gruden.com * The discussion list for http://webstandardsgroup.org/ *
RE: [WSG] Cache Tutorial
I'll probably need to check for the existence of If-Modified-Since in the request header then return the 304, so that it downloads the first time. Then requiring I actually respond with a correctly formatted Last-Modifed. Yes, by looking at the headers of the browsers request then sending back approriate ones using the header() function you should be able to have full control over caching. Off the top of my head I'm not certain of exactly what headers are involved each way (status, if-modified, last-modified, e-tag, etc..) but the tools are there. Cheers Mark -- Mark Stanton Technical Director Gruden Pty Ltd Tel: 9956 6388 Mob: 0410 458 201 Fax: 9956 8433 http://www.gruden.com * The discussion list for http://webstandardsgroup.org/ *
[WSG] Cache Tutorial
Very nice thorough article on how web caching works and how it can be used wisely. http://www.mnot.net/cache_docs/ Cheers Mark -- Mark Stanton Technical Director Gruden Pty Ltd Tel: 9956 6388 Mob: 0410 458 201 Fax: 9956 8433 http://www.gruden.com * The discussion list for http://webstandardsgroup.org/ *
RE: [WSG] Cache Tutorial
I really don't think this is OT at all. HTTP is the basis of everything we do and is very much a web standard. I think that if you put the following line of code in your stream.php file: header(HTTP/1.0 304 Not Modified); it should solve your problem. Use the LiveHTTPHeaders plugin for Firefox to test the results out. Cheers Mark -- Mark Stanton Technical Director Gruden Pty Ltd Tel: 9956 6388 Mob: 0410 458 201 Fax: 9956 8433 http://www.gruden.com * The discussion list for http://webstandardsgroup.org/ *
RE: [WSG] Can a list have one item?
I think a list with one item is ok, for example: h1Mark - Shopping List/h1 ul liCiggies/li /ul That's still as list in my book. However I think you should check the count server side anyway to avoid the following: h1Mark - New Years Resolutions/h1 ul /ul The DTD backs me up on this one !ELEMENT ul (li)+ A+ = A must occur one or more times. Cheers Mark -- Mark Stanton Technical Director Gruden Pty Ltd Tel: 9956 6388 Mob: 0410 458 201 Fax: 9956 8433 http://www.gruden.com * The discussion list for http://webstandardsgroup.org/ *
RE: [WSG] WHYYY??? WHYYYY???
Hey Peter What happens when you reduce the width by a few pixels? Does it move up? If so I'd say that you've got some IE box model weirdness going on. margin+border+padding+width (in IE6) margin+border+padding+width (in everything else) If that does fix it I'm at a loss. Cheers Mark -- Mark Stanton Technical Director Gruden Pty Ltd Tel: 9956 6388 Mob: 0410 458 201 Fax: 9956 8433 http://www.gruden.com * The discussion list for http://webstandardsgroup.org/ *
RE: [WSG] Tenth AIMIA Awards announced
Wow - the Grammies of web design. One day these awards might pay attention to what is actually going on in the web medium not treat sites as high bandwidth, interactive TV ads. There are a couple of good ones in there, a couple of your usual flash eye-candy sites and a whole bunch of rubbish. This one looks good - http://www.ecorecycle.vic.gov.au/ - Government site, nice table spacer image based layout doing a good impression of a css layout (all the rage these days you hear!) and an Accessibility Rating link in the footer. Click the link This site is not optimised for your browser. To view this site successfully you need Microsoft Internet Explorer 4.0 and above or Netscape 4.0 and above. You can upgrade your browser from the following locations: * Internet Explorer * Netscape You may proceed to the site but you may experience difficulty viewing pages. Proceed to the home page. - http://www.ecorecycle.vic.gov.au/www/unsupported_browser.asp Award winning indeed. Sorry for the negativity. Ok that was my initial reaction on seeing the awards site - I didn't send the email at 4pm because I thought there was too much emotion there not enough thought. I've chilled a bit now here's my take. These web design awards are a pretty sorry reflection on the state of the industry - pretty much every award I've seen places all the emphasis on eye-candy and none on the underlying quality of a web page in terms of how well does it plays in the Internet space. I'm not suggesting that sites should win these awards solely because they are standards compliant, but that should be a factor at least - particularly basic accessibility. Funnily enough I've just had a guy wander into the office - I saw the name of his company when I was browsing the AIMIA site and asked him about the awards gave him my take on it all. It turns out he was a judge in some of the categories (oops). His impression is that they have to make a decision based on the limited number of sites that are put in front of them. Also many of the judges are not qualified or experienced in web standards, they are just your regular IE users with broadband connections. Another point to make is that AIMIA does stand for Australian Interactive Media Industry Association and not Web Standards Group. But still, its kinda sad that despite the progress made in developing standards compliant sites - its a long long way from being main stream. So is it a problem that these awards and other best of breed website showcases like the MM Site of the day ignore standards compliance and accessibility as valid parts of a good web development? If so what can be done about it? I'm really interested in some ideas. Boundary-busting, stylistically baroque experiments built with DHTML and Flash will continue to win awards as long as judges continue to view them in the latest browsers on wide-screen G4s and Pentiums with T1 connections. And, it goes without saying, they will win these awards only if they are prize-worthy in their graphic design and programming. We're not talking about bad design, here. We're talking about design at the highest levels but design of a certain type only. ... I worry about the medium, because not enough designers are working in that vast middle ground between eye candy and hardcore usability where most of the Web must be built. And there are fewer and fewer incentives for Web designers to toil in these fields, since this type of work pleases Web users but wins absolutely no recognition from the industry, aside from a paycheck. (My God, it loaded so quickly and worked so well, even in IE3 on my Dad's old Dell machine. You know how awards show judges are always saying things like that? Neither do I.) - Mr Zeldman http://web.archive.org/web/20030414182353/www.adobe.com/web/features/zeldman 2821/page2.html Adobe seem to have dumped this little gem from their site :( Cheers Mark -- Mark Stanton Technical Director Gruden Pty Ltd Tel: 9956 6388 Mob: 0410 458 201 Fax: 9956 8433 http://www.gruden.com http://www.gruden.com/ * The discussion list for http://webstandardsgroup.org/ *
RE: [WSG] Tenth AIMIA Awards announced
If so what can be done about it? I'm really interested in some ideas. WSG Awards? :) I've really got my doubts about whether a WSG awards would be a solution to this particular problem - lack of acknowledgement of web standards in mainstream awards. I'm not saying WSG awards is a bad idea outright, but creating an additional award is not going to make the main award events stand up and go duh, we've been coming at this from the wrong angle. I also feel that hall of shame type stuff is not a great solution either - I'm seriously wondering what the right approach would be - I really don't know. Cheers Mark -- Mark Stanton Technical Director Gruden Pty Ltd Tel: 9956 6388 Mob: 0410 458 201 Fax: 9956 8433 http://www.gruden.com * The discussion list for http://webstandardsgroup.org/ *
RE: [WSG] Help with a bit of code plz
Cols is the number of column that you want in your text areas (similar to rows) and depending on your doctype - it may be required. So if you want 50 columns in your text areas you have to add cols=50. hth Cheers Mark -- Mark Stanton Technical Director Gruden Pty Ltd Tel: 9956 6388 Mob: 0410 458 201 Fax: 9956 8433 http://www.gruden.com * The discussion list for http://webstandardsgroup.org/ *
RE: [WSG] W3C VALIDATORS
I really don't think the client is the right place for validation of that sort. If the client (browser) was had a validation feature, then maybe but I feel that validation should take place at the same time as authoring. If you're using an IDE like Dreamweaver then it should have an option to validate the file when you click save, if you are using a CMS then validation should form part of the work flow. There are a couple of reasons for this, first as you pointed out it requires much more processing and bandwidth (mostly at W3C's end) on *every* page load. Doing a check sum as you describe would is marginally better, but The second issue is that validation is not your audience's problem - they don't really care if your page validates or not and why should they? 99% of users will simply be confused by another meaningless tick/cross. This also relates to the previous thread on opening new windows, but I really believe the right Internet is one that gives users the key information in the most basic format possible with no mess no fuss. Control over additional stuff like new windows, presentation, validation, background noises and animation should be in the user's hands - the author should NOT force this down their throats. The Internet should be a user's medium not an author's medium. Cheers Mark -- Mark Stanton Technical Director Gruden Pty Ltd Tel: 9956 6388 Mob: 0410 458 201 Fax: 9956 8433 http://www.gruden.com http://www.gruden.com/ * The discussion list for http://webstandardsgroup.org/ *
RE: [WSG] Strange IE5 Mac rendering - should be right now!
Hey Martin We use host headers to run multiple sites from the 1 IP address so this is not an option :( Anyway I think the DNS has resolved now, but if it hasn't you can try http://basketsgalore.gruden.com. Cheers Mark -- Mark Stanton Technical Director Gruden Pty Ltd Tel: 9956 6388 Mob: 0410 458 201 Fax: 9956 8433 http://www.gruden.com http://www.gruden.com/ smime.p7s Description: S/MIME cryptographic signature
RE: [WSG] Strange IE5 Mac rendering
Thanks Chris Width on the para fixed it. Kinda odd though isn't it? Cheers Mark -- Mark Stanton Technical Director Gruden Pty Ltd Tel: 9956 6388 Mob: 0410 458 201 Fax: 9956 8433 http://www.gruden.com * The discussion list for http://webstandardsgroup.org/ *
RE: [WSG] Special Sydney WSG Meeting!
There's been a few rumours that we might be supporting Russ the Max Designers, Ben the Daemonites and Sean the Macromedians. But nothing is going to be confirmed because we don't want groupies getting wind of all this. Its all very hush hush at the moment - I'm sure you understand. Cheers Mark -- Mark Stanton Technical Director Gruden Pty Ltd Tel: 9956 6388 Mob: 0410 458 201 Fax: 9956 8433 http://www.gruden.com * The discussion list for http://webstandardsgroup.org/ *
RE: [WSG] Second try with [a name]
Hey Taco Is this still correct though, having nothing in between the tags? See my previous email on this subject: !ELEMENT A - - (%inline;)* -(A) -- anchor -- The * means A*A may occur zero or more times - http://www.w3.org/TR/1999/REC-html401-19991224/intro/sgmltut.html#h-3.3.3.1 So yes empty a's are fine. Cheers Mark -- Mark Stanton Technical Director Gruden Pty Ltd Tel: 9956 6388 Mob: 0410 458 201 Fax: 9956 8433 http://www.gruden.com http://www.gruden.com/ * The discussion list for http://webstandardsgroup.org/ *
RE: [WSG] Programmer's Challenge [Virus checkedAU]
Sounds like another job for Google's pigeons... http://www.google.com/technology/pigeonrank.html Cheers Mark -- Mark Stanton Technical Director Gruden Pty Ltd Tel: 9956 6388 Mob: 0410 458 201 Fax: 9956 8433 http://www.gruden.com * The discussion list for http://webstandardsgroup.org/ *
RE: [WSG] Flowchart using CSS
I honestly think that flowcharts are one example where HTML is not the right answer. For one there are no real semantics available for this type of information and secondly you're going to have a bugger of a time making it look decent. I'd go for a graphic with a descriptive paragraph in the longdesc attribute. Cheers Mark -- Mark Stanton Technical Director Gruden Pty Ltd Tel: 9956 6388 Mob: 0410 458 201 Fax: 9956 8433 http://www.gruden.com * The discussion list for http://webstandardsgroup.org/ *
