Hey Paul my reply is nested below.
Paul Novitski wrote:
Chris,
Good for you, the world needs more XHTML-Strict. I do, however, have a few criticisms of your work:
Your nav menu is marked up as a table. Perhaps this is simply a matter of personal perspective, but I consider a one-dimensional series of items to be a list, not a table. Since your nav menu doesn't contain any two-dimensional correlation of rows & columns, either in its data or in its presentation, I don't agree with your choice of table markup. It appears that you were motivated by a desire to use the table's grid layout, not a "standards compliant" decision in my view.
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VERY TRUE,
And I know its wrong.
I didn't want it that way, that is what the 70 year-old lady wanted.
The old design had that table menu, she loved it, didnt want to part with it.
And I couldn't redo it with an unordered list - it didn't have the same shape and what not.
It just could not be done without tables - and still look the same. -----
Your defense of marking up the product listing as a table is weakened, in my view, by the fact that you've actually used the table to establish your page layout. Again, the rows and columns don't establish any data relationship among the products but rather merely demonstrates your desire to arrange them in rows. There's nothing that connects the items in a given row or column except their position on the screen except the matching of each photo with its Buy button. The fact that you've devoted a middle row of your table for "One Week Special Only" -- a message that seems to refer to the data as a whole -- is a further warning flag that this is a layout table.
----- Hmm. I dont know what to say here. The client wanted all the titles to line up. The images to line up. The BUY links to line up. and then every few products have been allocated SPECIAL status and what not.
This could not be done without tables.
If I had used an unordered list, without FIXING the height of the list elements, it wouldn't work.
And then with the fixed heights some of the titles get cut off because they take two rows, or even 3 in some cases.
Just getting my PHP to output those tables was a tough call. I wish there were an easier way, but I tried to do it with <ul>'s etc.. And it was taking way too long, and just not going anywhere.
I am sure if i spent more time thinking about it - I could have gotten it working.
-----
Aesthetically, I actually prefer the first screenload of the original website over your reworking, primarily because your large, multicolored nav menu seems quite garish compared to the muted character of the background color, fonts, and art. Also, from a practical standpoint, the original page let the photo of the dolls (the primary subject of the website) dominate the top screenload, while your over-sized nav menu pushes them down so they're barely visible in the top screenload in a 800x600 display.
----- Hmmm. I didn't realise this.
Nice comment :) -----
I suggest you use a shorter line length and/or larger font and/or greater line-height to make the text blocks more readable. I'd scale the width of the text column in ems to maintain the font-size-to-column-width proportion as the text is resized.
----- That would have been a good idea, had I thought of it at the time... Thanks again :) -----
I find white font on pale blue background nearly unreadable.
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True - I was aware of that at the time but she said it was fine when I asked her.
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Glancing at your HTML source for the front page, I see that you're using inline styles in the nav menu -- is this "standards compliant"? I'd move them to the external stylesheet file.
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Yes I did that because it seemed a little pedantic to give each table cell a class, and then have an extra 3 lines in the stylesheet just to assign the colour.
I beleive that my choice was the more proper way to handle it in this case.
Normally I would agree - but look at the situation.
-----
You've given your images the class names "right" and "left" which are again presentational attributes embedded in the HTML. I'd change those to unique ids or functional class names ("odd" and "even"?) and then assign their right & left positions in CSS. The way your page is marked up now, if your client decides tomorrow that she'd prefer the alternating photos to begin on the left and not the right, you'll either have to change your HTML to effect a presentational change (=warning flag) or change your CSS to the silliness of:
.left {float: right;}
.right {float: left;}
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True again - I knew that when coding it.
She doesnt do any editing of the site at all.
The only person who does any editing is her daughter, who only edits my HTML templates, and doesnt understand the CSS file at all.
That is why some of my colouring and coding is done inline.
Although some was frustration and lazyness too.
-----
Regards, Paul
----- Thanks for your huge response! Loved to read and respond to it!
Sorry that I may have been a little over zealous when saying it is a standards compliant remake - when it doesn't follow all the rules.
I mean, it was only a 1 day job.
So I did it really quick.
It was only a few hundred dollars worth - and yeah.
Just wanted to share my work with the list!
Thanks again for the response!
Cheers! -----
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-- ------------------------ Chris Stratford [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.neester.com ------------------------
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