Title: RE: [WSG] A new standards based smh.com.au/technology

>> I'd certainly like to use them if you have no objections.

of course not, its an important message. gotta get it out there :)

we're going to try to put together a "whats new about the design" page on the site with some more concise detail on it for future designs. that'll hopefully be a good page to point those clients to aswell :)

pete

-----Original Message-----
From: Nick Lo [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]
Sent: Thursday, February 26, 2004 11:20 AM
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: Re: [WSG] A new standards based smh.com.au/technology



Hi Pete,

Funny, I was going to mention this to the list but I hesitated.
However, after your reply below I'm glad Tim didn't hesitate. I don't
know about anyone else, but your reasons why, coming from such a high
profile site, are a great advertisement/example to Australian clients 
of reasons to use web standards.

I'd certainly like to use them if you have no objections.

Nick

> Hi Tim,
> thanks for yr kind words :)
>
> I was going to send a note around to the list when we fixed a
> few things up with it but just havent had time...
>
> ok, so few points:
>
> *       yep, the new tech section is our first live site
>         using css for layout. any site we build from
>         scratch from this point will be using css for layout.
>         if we're ammending old sites we'll probably use the existing
>         (table) layout, but it'll be a case by case thing.
>
> *       we were all quite stoked in the design team when we
>         got to the end of the first day and hadnt recieved
>         one email from a user saying the layout was funked up
>         or they couldnt read the text or any of the other usual
>         emails we get when we launch something of a decent profile
>
> *       the validating thing is difficult - for the reasons you
>         pointed out mostly. I think wired had some similar issues
>         with ad tags etc when they launched. There's probably some
>         other bits of code that arent validating either that we
>         can improve on as we go. the projects move so fast that
>         its very difficult to do anything past making sure it
>         looks decent in IE5, 5.5, 6, Opera, Mozilla, Safari - and
>         then we're away. We value the importance of validation bigtime,
>         but we dont kill ourselves over it. hence we've chosen
>         the 'transitional' approach.
>
> *       we've learnt more about css layouts since the design was
>         locked down (first week of jan) and while the positioning
>         of the left and right columns are floats in this design,
>         we'll be using absolute positioning for those columns in the
>         future. mainly to get the main content further up in the
> markup.
>
> *       to answer "How were the 'forces of power' in f2 convinced
>         to invest in web standards and what commitment by management
>         was needed"? question:
>
>         a) we illustrated how much money we'd save on serving costs
>         due to lighter pages. Its hard to predict an exact figure but I
>         think it'd run into hundreds of thousands of dollars once
>         we convert the whole network over to css.
>
>         b) we are obviously very focussed on budgets etc - its a
>         commercial business - so as sites are needing quicker and
>         quicker redsigns to keep up with the market and advertising
>         needs we had to standardise and make redesigns as simple as
> possible.
>
>         c) better markup = better chances of ratings on search engines
>
>         d) at the moment our 'network' of sites doesnt look much like a
>         network. css is going to help standardise elements and the
> look & feel.
>
>         e) easier implementation for the dev guys. now that the
>         pages are cut up into little bit size chunks (divs), they
>         arent fooling around with our non-breaking spaces, <br> tags,
>         col/rowspans in tables other stuff. and that one has just
>         been proven. easiest and smoothest implementation of one
>         of our designs yet.
>
>         f) pages load faster
>
> We're also lucky to have a great very persuasive manager
> ourselves who was able to put all this into a message that
> was even more attractive to the wider Management who really
> just want to know "does it look great?" and "how much
> did it cost?".
>
> In short, we're pretty excited. And a little nervous. Youve
> gotta understand, this is pretty nerve racking putting such
> a high profile design up, (i think its over 400,000 unique
> users a month now for just this section) and having the design
> community/this list check it out :) you know that feeling you
> get when you preview something in opera and your heart jumps up
> into your throat as youre waiting on it to load.. :)
>
> anyway, thumbs up to Andrew Coffey, one of our 4 designers
> (including myself) here that was the lead designer on this one.
> Let us know if you can spot any major display errors or anything.
> In saying that, we've learnt a lot since this design got locked
> down (as is the way with this css game - its so hard to keep up! :)
> so keep an eye out for some major improvements across the whole
> smh/age sites proper over the next few months.
>
> if anyones got any other questions, let us know, i could
> talk underwater about this stuff ;-)
>
> pete
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