Re: [WSG] Re: Website Directory Structure - Best Practice
Nancy Johnson wrote: I believe best practices are to have all images in a directory entitled images, all css, in a folder entitled css etc etc, However, there are exceptions. I work for a college and have 200 images of headshots of faculty and put in an a separate directory for management purposes. You need to look at how the site is used and managed. Best Practices, isn't always 100% appropriate. Nancy Johnson Nancy, I don't believe that anyone here is suggesting that Best Practices is some sort of dogma. They are practices -- ways of doing things that work well under a number of circumstances. What we are looking for is not some ultimate format or way but solutions that might be better than our own. Wikipedia: "The term best practice generally refers to the best possible way of doing something;..." All the best, Jay -- Jay Gilmore Developer / Consultant SmashingRed Web & Marketing P] 902.529.0651 E] [EMAIL PROTECTED] U] http://www.smashingred.com B] http://www.smashingred.com/blog ** 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] Website Directory Structure - Best Practice
Joseph R. B. Taylor wrote: How do YOU set up your directories? Joe, The way I have set up directories is as follows: /root_web_folder /_images /_images/content /_images/content/content_image.jpg...etc.(photos, illustrations etc.) /_images/layout /_images/layout/layout_image.jpg...etc.(backgrounds, buttons etc.) /_includes/ /_includes/all.inc.php /_scripts /_scripts/all.js /_styles /_styles/common.css /_styles/IElte6.css /_styles/IE7B2P.css /main_section_one/ /main_section_one/index.php...etc. /main_section_one/all_other_section_pages.php /main_section_two/ /main_section_two/index.php...etc. /main_section_one/all_other_section_pages.php /index.php...etc. As you can see, I keep most images, stylesheets, scripts, and includes in separate directories with an underscore prefix so they appear in directory listings before the main-section directories. I always make main section directories and have an index page so I can use relative directory paths for main section links as opposed to some filename in the root web directory. I also separate my images into content and layout so that when I am changing or updating templates or site themes I don't accidentally delete or lose the content images. I don't know if this is a standard--other than for me. I would love to see other views and examples of this. BTW I am aware that it is not a best practice in php security to leave the includes folder in the web root folder. All the best, Jay -- Jay Gilmore Developer / Consultant SmashingRed Web & Marketing P] 902.529.0651 E] [EMAIL PROTECTED] U] http://www.smashingred.com B] http://www.smashingred.com/blog ** 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] Stand alone IE6 Installer
Helmut Granda wrote: Jay, Thanks for your explanation and your recommendation, I didn't think of using IE7 as SA (I didn't even knew it was available). I am aware that I'm running a Beta and all of the technical difficulties that could come with using Beta software. But I'm not too concerned since I don't use IE as my primary Browser; actually I use FF for work and Opera for personal usage. Thanks again! ...helmut The solution, explanation and script are located here: http://weblogs.asp.net/jgalloway/archive/2005/12/28/434132.aspx To install the ie7 as a standalone try here: http://www.sitepoint.com/newsletter/viewissue.php?id=5&issue=18 Scroll down for the instructions. I also found a link that has both above links included on the same article here: http://www.sitepoint.com/blogs/2006/02/12/standalone-ie7-the-fix/ ATB, Jay -- Jay Gilmore Developer / Consultant SmashingRed Web & Marketing P] 902.529.0651 E] [EMAIL PROTECTED] U] http://www.smashingred.com B] http://www.smashingred.com/blog ** 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] Stand alone IE6 Installer
Helmut Granda wrote: Does anyone know if there is a stand alone IE6 installer anywhere? Similar to IE4 and IE5. I am running IE7 and I really don’t want to uninstall just to test couple of sites on IE6. ...helmut Helmut, What you are running is a preview release of IE7 Beta 2 not even Beta 2. If the MIX06 release is out then you are running Beta 2 but the MS IE blog has made many attempts to explain that there are still changes coming. In addition it will not be in General Availability till 2007. There are lots of great articles about running IE7 as a standalone and solution that I am using has a batch file that fixes a registry entry that will screw up your IE 6 when they are run on the same machine. I would strongly suggest that you switch back to IE6 and use a SA version of the IE7 release that is out now. Just my opinion. All the best, Jay -- Jay Gilmore Developer / Consultant SmashingRed Web & Marketing P] 902.529.0651 E] [EMAIL PROTECTED] U] http://www.smashingred.com B] http://www.smashingred.com/blog ** 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] Employee Hierarchy in CSS
Geoff Pack wrote: Hi Sarah, I agree with Jay - it should be a nested list, but I'd avoid floats completely and use absolute positioning to lay it out. I'd also change the nesting to reflect the org structure, not just the level. Assuming the managers report to the GM, then: MD FC GM Manager 1 Manager 2 Manager 3 Manager 4 Manager 5 Manager 6 Manager 7 PA Geoff, Sarah, My only suggestion is to have the outer list as an as there is an explicit order of value/importance and it could be indicated when the list is unstyled. But this solution looks great. Jay -- Jay Gilmore Developer / Consultant SmashingRed Web & Marketing P] 902.529.0651 E] [EMAIL PROTECTED] U] http://www.smashingred.com B] http://www.smashingred.com/blog ** 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] Employee Hierarchy in CSS
Sarah Peeke (XERT) wrote:
Hi Micky,
Why do you want to present an empty container?
As I already (perhaps badly) explained, I need to show a visual
hierarchy of employees.
The first row has the MD.
The second row the GM, Financial Controller and PA.
The third row all other Managers (7 in total).
I need to keep the MD (in the first row) in the middle of the row.
The second row will have some gaps as there are only 3 staff.
The third row has seven Managers.
All of this needs to be centered on the page.
CAPTION
or
CAPTION
Not sure how these examples improve the elegance of the solution.
Any other ideas please?
Sarah
Sarah,
Using Russ' layout (which is to achieve a floated gallery) for what
sounds to me to be an organizational root/tree structure seems to fail
if the styles are unavailable. Your relationships between your clusters
or groups will not exist without the CSS and therefore have reduced
meaning.
I would think that you want something like: (example at
http://www.smashingred.com/test/floated_org_chart.html)
Top Level Post
Caption
2nd Level Posts
Caption
Caption
Caption
3rd Level Posts
Caption
Caption
Caption
Caption
Caption
Caption
Caption
with the styles similar to what follows:
ol, ul{
bullet-style-type:none;
padding:0;
margin:0;
}
ol li ul li {
display:inline;
float: left;
width: 100px;
border: 1px solid blue;
margin:0 5px;
}
ol ul{
clear:both;
display: block;
height: 150px;
}
li ul li {
text-align:center;
}
I have created a valid test page at
http://www.smashingred.com/test/floated_org_chart.html please let me
know if that helps. If anyone wants to ad to this please let me know and
I will make the changes.
All the best.
Jay
--
Jay Gilmore
Developer / Consultant
SmashingRed Web & Marketing
P] 902.529.0651
E] [EMAIL PROTECTED]
U] http://www.smashingred.com
B] http://www.smashingred.com/blog
**
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See http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm
for some hints on posting to the list & getting help
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Re: [WSG] WSG Site
Tom Livingston wrote: Listers, This is most likely old news, but I seem to have been having mail problems for over 1/2 a day so did not get wsg list messages for a while... Is the WSG site down? Or is it just me? I noticed that the website was down yesterday. It is now up for me here. I haven't suffered any list stoppages or slowdowns though. There might have been some DNS issue that may have caused it to go invisible. In certain areas. It'd be worth investigating. Jay -- Jay Gilmore Developer / Consultant SmashingRed Web & Marketing P] 902.529.0651 E] [EMAIL PROTECTED] U] http://www.smashingred.com B] http://www.smashingred.com/blog ** 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] CAPS in stylesheets
sime wrote: define "practically redundant." I consider HTML 4.01 strict to be "practically awesome" for new web sites, but that's more of personal preference. Which brings me back to my original question question. Rephrased, what are the different situations in which you'd use HTML4 over XHTML1? So far I've been led to believe (outside of this list) that XHTML is a step forward. Many people, especially editor developers, have been implementing default DOCTYPES as either XHTML transitional and XHTML strict and many authors of great books have done the same but from what I understand is that many of these people have adopted XHTML incorrectly simply because it is newer. Unfortunately, is is not made clear by the W3C -- in plain English and succinctly that it (XHTML) is not a replacement or update for HTML but a different spec altogether. There are uses for XHTML, but for most computer based web browsers there is no real advantage to XHTML as they just treat it as HTML anyway. I have also read (no personal first hand knowledge) that there can be issues between using DOM/DHTML scripts and XHTML. I don't know what these issues are but why invite trouble. I think many standards oriented people have moved or stayed with HTML 4.0X and those who are using XHTML are either using it incorrectly and unknowing of its proper application or the minute few who are actually serving it as "application/xhtml+xml". Jay -- Jay Gilmore Developer / Consultant SmashingRed Web & Marketing P] 902.529.0651 E] [EMAIL PROTECTED] U] http://www.smashingred.com B] http://www.smashingred.com/blog ** 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] CAPS in stylesheets
sime wrote: > No, it will not work under XHTML at all. The DOCTYPE is irrelevant, XHTML is case > sensitive and uppercase element selectors will not match anything in XHTML. It will > only work for text/html. I have never had a problem with the uppercase not working in strict. Maybe I'm not defining strict correctly. Here is a test page which works in FF,IE6: http://urbits.com/_/test.php I checked the response headers using webdevtoolbar and your server is sending this as "text/html" and not "application/xhtml+xml". Jay -- Jay Gilmore Developer / Consultant SmashingRed Web & Marketing P] 902.529.0651 E] [EMAIL PROTECTED] U] http://www.smashingred.com B] http://www.smashingred.com/blog ** 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] Wanted ASAP: Clean and Simple image gallery script
Lukasz Grabun wrote: Fulfills, AFAIK, all or most of your requirements. After peeking at the site and looking at the demo code I think you have hit the nail on the head. I am open to other suggestions from members though. ATB, Jay -- Jay Gilmore Developer / Consultant SmashingRed Web & Marketing P] 902.529.0651 E] [EMAIL PROTECTED] U] http://www.smashingred.com B] http://www.smashingred.com/blog ** 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] Wanted ASAP: Clean and Simple image gallery script
If anyone on this list knows of or has a clean and simple PHP/MySQL image gallery script that is not full of nested tables and is easy to modify with a basic php knowledge I need it for a project. Preferably one that uses GD and not Imagemagik and doesn't require register globals to be on and safe mode off. Of list responses are fine but I think others may be interested in a possible resource. All the best, Jay -- Jay Gilmore Developer / Consultant SmashingRed Web & Marketing P] 902.529.0651 E] [EMAIL PROTECTED] U] http://www.smashingred.com B] http://www.smashingred.com/blog ** 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] Site Check/Launch: Edentiti.com
Lachlan Hunt wrote: It was decided by the designer and management that they wanted the logo on the homepage to be slightly larger and more prominent as a branding exercise, but to then move it up to the header, out of the way for all the sub pages. You may want to send them a copy of Steve Krug's "Don't Make Me Think". This is a big no no as far as conventions are concerned. My opinion is that it looks like ad clutter below the header. Because of the line used to delineate the navigation it looks like content not a site id and when the page loads I don't know what site I am on and what it is about. There is no tagline to give meaning to the site. I may just leave because it isn't apparent as to what the site purpose is. I think that there is not enough pop (visually) for the calls to action. From a marketing standpoint I find it hard to figure out what I want to do next and there is no lead to the action by color, shape etc. We do use these cues regardless of the content. From a designer and marketer point of view there should be a graphical flow chart with the service explanation that shows what this does. The orange color and font-weight of the "Edentiti is a safe secure private place for your identification information." is too light and the contrast is low. I think it either needs to be heavier, larger or reverse the colors of the h2 and the above sentence. BTW what is with the nested strong elements? Is this countering the effect in FF? Don't beat yourself up over the XHTML thing -- it is called working in the real world. Jay -- Jay Gilmore Developer / Consultant SmashingRed Web & Marketing P] 902.529.0651 E] [EMAIL PROTECTED] U] http://www.smashingred.com B] http://www.smashingred.com/blog ** 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 logo not link to the homepage?
Herrod, Lisa wrote: Christian, can you point us to an example where home text has been added to the logo on site sub-pages? I'm really interested to see the type of sites that are implementing this. Lisa, This idea appears on page 63 and then discussed on page 67 of Steve Krug's, "Don't Make Me Think". The sample site he shows in the image is of MSNBC.com's. In the example it shows that the top level MSNBC logo with no "home" on it and all subsections with the "home". They have changed their site (http://www.msnbc.com ) since the book came out, the "home" is no longer on the logo and they are using a top level breadcrumb trail to get you there as well as a clickable logo. I would argue that their current use of the bc-trail actually makes it harder to figure out how to get back home. Ah well -- designers. All the best, Jay -- Jay Gilmore Developer / Consultant SmashingRed Web & Marketing P] 902.529.0651 E] [EMAIL PROTECTED] U] http://www.smashingred.com B] http://www.smashingred.com/blog ** 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] Breadcrumb as Section Heading H1
Terrence Wood wrote: James Hunter: Is it appropriate to use the breadcrumb as the H1 element? I'm thinking out aloud here: not sure why, but using a list for breadcrumbs doesn't quite sit right with me, despite it being a type of navigation device. I think it is due to list structures replacing the and elements - and the notion that the site hierarchy represented as links is distinctly different from a navigation menu. Anyone else have thoughts on this? Based on that idea wouldn't it make sense to do something like: Main Site Parent Section Parent Document Parent Current Document Provided your head doesn't explode nesting the lists it gives you a nice hierarchical structure for the list that looks great with no styles. You could then style the child elements to have the less than symbols as the list bullet? Any thoughts? -- Jay Gilmore Developer / Consultant SmashingRed Web & Marketing P] 902.529.0651 E] [EMAIL PROTECTED] U] http://www.smashingred.com B] http://www.smashingred.com/blog ** 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] problem with Conditional Comments
Christian Montoya wrote: On 2/20/06, Soeren Mordhorst <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: Tried these CCs in multiple ways, but it does not work. For example: ... Any suggestions? As far as I know, if you have standalone installs of IE 5 and 6 on your machine, they will not see the conditional comments. Christian, This article seems to have the fix. http://www.positioniseverything.net/articles/multiIE.html The article on IE7 Standalone at Sitepoint ( http://www.sitepoint.com/newsletter/viewissue.php?id=5&issue=18#5 ) works fine. I read another article about a better (haven't tried it so don't know) standalone of 7 so that its conditionals work. http://blog.skyzyx.com/2006/02/02/internet-explorer-70-beta-2-standalone-is-available/ and http://weblogs.asp.net/jgalloway/archive/2005/12/28/434132.aspx for the batch file for launching. Jay -- Jay Gilmore Developer / Consultant SmashingRed Web & Marketing P] 902.529.0651 E] [EMAIL PROTECTED] U] http://www.smashingred.com B] http://www.smashingred.com/blog ** 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] Plugin - was [ just sharing the frustration ]
Designer wrote: Jay Gilmore wrote: . . . I usually paste as plain text into HTML-Kit and I have a plugin that converts line breaks into and also can turn text lists into 's or 's. Hey Jay, Can you tell us more? What plugin? Sounds very handy! Thanks Bob McClelland Cornwall (U.K.) www.gwelanmor-internet.co.uk Bob, If you are an HTML-Kit user the plugin is called wkStructure and is available at http://www.chami.com/html-kit/plugins/info/wkstructure/ . I am sure that there are good ways to do these sorts of things in DreamWeaver but I quit using it two years ago when I found HTML-Kit as it Dreamweaver is a system resources pig for someone who would only use code view. There are hundreds of plugins for Hkit and more than I will ever use. There are limits to the program as it is not a very good IDE for PHP which Dreamweaver is. All the best, Jay -- Jay Gilmore Developer / Consultant SmashingRed Web & Marketing P] 902.529.0651 E] [EMAIL PROTECTED] U] http://www.smashingred.com B] http://www.smashingred.com/blog ** 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] just sharing the frustration
Ted Drake wrote: Here's a helpful hint on doing this crap. Use htmlTidy, while I haven't used this, I've heard it's really good. Normally, what I do is create a new basic html page in dreamweaver. I go to the design view and paste the content into the screen. I then switch to code view and run a few search and replaces to clean it up. Dreamweaver does a pretty good job of turning word into decent coding. If people would only use styles in word, i.e. header tags, ul, etc. pasting into dreamweaver would be a five minute exercise. Ted HTML-Kit has a tool to strip extra Word 2000 tags although, I usually paste as plain text into HTML-Kit and I have a plugin that converts line breaks into and also can turn text lists into 's or 's. It doesn't see nested levels in lists though. I actually insist that my clients send me copy in plain text documents where possible and even then I have to fix all the windows charset issues. Damned smart quotes and auto mdashes. Jay -- Jay Gilmore Developer / Consultant SmashingRed Web & Marketing P] 902.529.0651 E] [EMAIL PROTECTED] U] http://www.smashingred.com B] http://www.smashingred.com/blog ** 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 design education
Minh D. Tran wrote: I personally believe as "Accessibility Evangelists," part of our responsibilities is to bring this to their attention. These are web designing instructors, they are teaching more and more people to design the "tables" way, which is the exact way that we are trying eliminate. This is the exact same reason for my main argument in my thread on Calling for a scalable business case for web standards for small business. My point was, and still is, that groups like WaSP and WSG need to take more of an advocacy role on in the larger community. Yes it makes sense to convert the people who have gone through these programs but if business demanded that sites be standards based and accessible then schools who teach otherwise will stop graduating people into nested table hell. Don't tell me to join a WSG in my local area. Don't tell me that we should just keep doing the work. We need to get up on our soap boxes and convert business, thought leaders and educators that standards matter and that building a broken web is bad for everyone. I know that there are members of WaSP who are trying to get educators on board but there is still a bunch of people out there who are ex graphic designers or visual developers who know only Dreamweaver or StopDead (GoLive) who are asked to teach because they have won some prize or worked for a big company. All the best, Jay -- Jay Gilmore Developer / Consultant SmashingRed Web & Marketing P] 902.529.0651 E] [EMAIL PROTECTED] U] http://www.smashingred.com B] http://www.smashingred.com/blog ** 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] "cool" FAQ page [follow up]
Hey Tierry and Terrance, This is a respectful suggestion. Since Jakob Nielsen is not dead and Useit.com is not the King James Bible, Talmud, Torah, Quaran etc., why not email him and get his opinion on this. In fact, I asked his opinion on this recent adlinks phenomena just today, where sites are using scripts to place / selling ads linking to sites that don't relate specifically to the article. He responded briefly within two hours. All the best, Jay Thierry Koblentz wrote: Terrence Wood wrote: Wow! This time you're seriously wrong. What I'm using on my site has absolutely nothing to with the way I interpret the USEIT articles. FYI, I'm not only using skip links, but also popup windows. Does that make me unaware of the issues related to both? the popup window reference is irrelevant. If you simply replace "opening new windows" with "using jump links" If you replaced it with "chocolate orange cake" it would make sense according to your logic, but it becomes glaringly obvious just how wrong that logic is. I disagree, and FWIW I find your analogy pretty silly. One can click on a "jump link", not on a "chocolate orange cake". What you are calling "jump links" are nothing more than hypertext links. Hypertext links are the foundation of the web. W3C define hypertext links like this: "A link is a connection from one web resource to another [1]... The destination anchor of a link may be an element within an HTML document.[2]" That's the W3C talking, AFAIK, it has absolutely nothing to do with usability/accessibility. It is about how things are supposed to work, not how they are supposed to be implemented. For example, accesskey is a proper attribute, part of the recommendations, but there are usability/accessibility issues attached to it, isn't? And there are other examples... It seems that for the author the bottom line is *consistency* Consistency *is* the bottom line for usability. I have never disputed that. Nielsen also says use platform conventions. Creating a list of links to resources within a page is a convention for the web. So how can you say that "jump links" in a document are consistent with the navigation links for example? Users click on the latter and are taken to another page, they click on the former and are taken in a different location on the same page. How consistent is that? Actually, I believe the key is to let the user *know* what's about to happen when he clicks on something that is going to do anything else than loading a *new* document. We see that with links that open popup windows so why should we think it should be different with other "behaviors"? In short, I believe that a FAQ page that says "clicking on the Qs will reveals the As below" is less an issue than "jump links" that do not warn the user of what's gonna happen next. Regards, Thierry | www.TJKDesign.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] Call for a new (scalable) business case for web standards.
Jan Brasna wrote: " I want a standards based website -- can you deliver?" This premise is wrong. When I'm buying a house I also do not explicitly state that I want it to be built with standards, however I anticipate it's not going to fall on my head soon. I don't agree with this analogy. Standards that govern the construction of homes and buildings in most western nations are set by regulating arms of the government and are there for the mortal protection of person and property. It is not a business case it is a matter of safety and liability. So you don't die and so governments aren't allowing unsafe buildings to be built under their watch. And BTW if you assume all the work done in your home meets standards I would strongly advise getting a home inspector in. Standards change and people who don't know what they are doing can ruin anything that was built on standards -- just like on the web. Web standards are a set of principles based around the recommendations of various authorities and experts for the purpose of excellence and professionalism -- they have no real danger if ignored. Web standards are more like ISO9000 management certification, companies that have this certification adhere to guidelines based on management structure and coordination but if a company lets their ISO status slide because they stop filing management reports is doing harm only to themselves in that their operation may become disorganized or tatty. A few customers will choose to not work with them as a result of the status change but if the product is the same when it changes hands and the support is intact etc. the end user really doesn't care that certification exists or not. No one will die or be harmed as a result of tag soup or demi-infinite nested tables. The website may be built on a rubble foundation but there are no regulatory bodies to make sure that they won't collapse (pardon the CSS pun). It's the professional side of all the suppliers. If you want to target the educational influence, do it there. Clients shouldn't care - they have own businesses to look after. I do agree, and that is my main point, but those influencers, first movers and thought leaders are business people and there needs to be some compelling reason for them to adopt and then evangelize web standards. My ongoing struggle is that we (web standards oriented developers) have made, what I think is, a case for larger enterprise in cost, maintenance, bandwidth etc. I want to develop a consistent, concise, and compelling case for these leaders to grab onto web standards. What I have come to realise is that groups like WaSP and WSG need to get together and put forth a path to conversion for business to integrate web standards into their operations. We have not focus so much attention on criticizing those who won't move forward and make them obsolete by making web standards THE standard that business demands of developers. There will always be those who want to focus on publish-day price only and maybe they get what they pay for but not what they deserve. The WSG and WaSP should make an effort to be more in touch with business beyond trying to make IE a halfway decent browser but in creating respect, understanding and desire for a better, more functional, more agile web. As always, all the best, Jay ** 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] Call for a new (scalable) business case for web standards.
I am coming to realize that there is little real business case for small business. Total cost of operation of a website for a small business might be marginal. My reasoning for this thread was to formulate a position statement that could be communicated to small business leaders to have them carry the message that web standards will mean x and y to all business owners and that we would then see demand follow. I was not hoping to find out ways to convince Joe or Jane business owner to buy my services based on standards in our sales cycle. I am looking longer view and want to find ways to show the business community that they have no choice but to have standards. Everyone in this thread seems to gravitate to the, "but its better" argument. Don't get me wrong I am a strong supporter of web standards and love learning more and more about how to become better at coding pages in such a fashion but we all seem to miss that a website is not and end in itself but a means to an end and that the risk for the small business owner if they buy a site with sloppy code and non-semantic markup is negligible. If they have bad copy or they don't communicate their message that is deadly. HTML and its ilk is merely a vehicle for communication and not communication and sometimes even when the transmission is messy the message is communicated. Websites for small business are an extension of their marketing strategy and a way to help achieve their goals. If we can't come up with a strong business case for the 80% of business that has less than 20 employees (Canadian Stats). We are failing them. They deserve to get great, well made websites they just need to know why and what it is worth. As I said at the outset of this thread, I want a way to create wide demand for the use of standards as opposed to converting individuals and creating apostles to the standards movement. I want to create such a compelling argument that business can't ignore it and that some thought leaders will take that message and start spreading it like a virus so that it can geometrically extends into the small towns and little neighborhood shops and then we no longer need even attempt to push it to clients (which we shouldn't do anyway ) and have them demand it, " I want a standards based website -- can you deliver?" This will do two things, one make all those developers who have been sitting on the fence about moving to standards pick a side and two all the larger firms that reject or ignore standards will either have to adapt or go home. Lets all put our thinking caps on, talk to our clients and talk to the community and find out how we can make small business want standards, and demand standards! All the best, Jay ** 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] IE7 hacks
Ted, Thanks for the post. Do we even know if the Beta 2 css rendering engine is done though? Does it make sense to be considering hacks yet? I have layout issues with current sites due to hacks for >6 and I will definitely wait before I change them as I don't think that the rendering development and bug fixes is done -- hence the beta release. All the best, Jay Jay Gilmore U)SmashingRed Web & Marketing B)Jay Gilmore's SmashingRed Blog P) 902.529.0651 E) [EMAIL PROTECTED] Ted Drake wrote: Hi everyone I posted a hack to IE7 today. I know I'm not the first one to find this, but thought I'd throw it out there for all to love on. www.tdrake.net It's pretty simple. But please, think beyond hacks. Ted Drake www.tdrake.net ** 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] Call for a new (scalable) business case for web standards.
Ben Bishop wrote: On 2/3/06, Jay Gilmore <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: I want to go beyond the argument of separation of information and presentation markup. What sort of resistance are you facing here? I.e. why are you arguing in the first place? The definition of argument I am using is support of a position and not disagreement. That portion is an easy sell. I am really talking about form and usage of semantics, logical content markup I don't understand what kind of clients you have that are pushing for non-semantic and illogical markup. This is not the case at all. Are you looking for ammunition to try to convince a business they really need a new website because their current one isn't standards based? Are you looking for an explanation of why you are different to all the other web developers out there? No. and No Ultimately, do you really need to "sell" web standards to the client? I'm all for educating businesses. I'm all for educating developers. If you really want to get out there and make a difference, organise Web Standards Group meetings in your home city. Give presentations to user groups. Give talks to interest groups. Show everyone your passion. -Ben Ben you have missed my point entirely. My reason for this post is not for selling my business. My reason for posting was that in many threads on this NG from the time I started people have been talking about bringing web standards to a wider acceptance level in the developer community. My post at the top of this thread was to solicit comments and suggestions that could be the basis for communicating the compelling business case for small business to actually want web standards. My thought is to begin to develop such an awareness of this business case for web standards for small business that web standards becomes the standard based on demand and not a push from the developer community. I believe that there is only so much the web standards community can do to convert the rest of the development community until a critical mass of business make a requirement of it. They will never do this unless there is a real case for it. My reason for a small business case is the percentage of small business that comprise the economy is so great that to convince or make the case the though leaders in that community will have greater impact than us just adding one or two developers to the WSG. And as for starting a WSG in my community? I live in a rural community so this is my WSG. I am moving past "selling:" web standards to my client my goal is that web standards based development become a sweeping standard in the industry and the only way to achieve that is if business concludes it is a bad business decision to do anything other and demand it of all developers whom they engage. All the best, Jay
Re: [WSG] Call for a new (scalable) business case for web standards.
Christian, I wholeheartedly agree with you points but I want to go beyond the argument of separation of information and presentation markup. I am talking about coding using the whole of standards based documents. That portion is an easy sell. I am really talking about form and usage of semantics, logical content markup (SEO is a good argument here). Maybe I am making too much of it and trying to over theorize the issue. Jay Jay Gilmore U)SmashingRed Web & Marketing B)Jay Gilmore's SmashingRed Blog P) 902.529.0651 E) [EMAIL PROTECTED] Christian Montoya wrote: On 2/2/06, Jay Gilmore <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: I am looking for a way to make small business owners see that they have now sane alternative but to use web standards, not tell them they will be ahead of the curve or save $100/year on hosting. I'll think of more arguments later, but I can definitely say: - CSS and seperation of presentation from content makes updating a site easier, whether it uses a CMS or not. Tag soup CMS solutions are usually expensive, whereas a typical CSS based site can be built on top of a free CMS. More importantly, when the site does not run on a CMS, it really helps to have clean, semantic code without presentational markup. I know it's a pain for small businesses to pay someone to update their website all the time (they usually can't afford to do it in-house), and even if they still pay someone to update their CSS based site, at least the updates take less time. - Also, CSS makes it easy to have the site redesigned in the future, should it ever be necessary, and if someone gives me a CSS site to redesign, they'll definitely save a lot of money, considering how few changes I would probably have to make to the markup. Pretty much any argument that emphasizes lower maintenance cost is key for small businesses. SEO is a plus. -- -- Christian Montoya christianmontoya.com ... rdpdesign.com ... cssliquid.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] Call for a new (scalable) business case for web standards.
Hi WSG'rs, I want to put the call out for submissions for a business case for web standards for small business. I have reviewed a number of articles (referenced below) to find some compelling argument for web standards that could be communicated to the small business community. Currently several arguments for web standards include the following as the main focus: *Faster development time (unless the competition uses software that creates tag soup and can synchronize site wide libraries and SSI's) *Better cross browser compatibility (small business view this as how the site looks, pixel-perfect, identical) *Easier maintenance (can;t use the software they bought to maintain the site: easier to make a case for a CMS) *lighter bandwidth usage (this matters little to the short-view small business owner looking and cash flow for the quarter on their site that gets 1000 impressions per month) My problem with such arguments is that they don't scale to small business well. Most small business look at a website as an end in itself and not a means to an end which it should be. Small business wants it done fast and to look as they imagine it to and not to suck from a user perspective. Small business usually doesn't consider maintenance as a deciding factor as they look at price, technology, and style before they consider whether anyone will have to maintain it. And the big one that cannot scale is bandwidth and that is because small business doesn't care about bandwidth -- they just care if their page is up and works. They can't see that if they have compound growth that they will suffer at the hand of error messages, and up charges on their hosting. And why should they? They are trying to run a business, many as CEO and CTO and VP Marketing and everything else (like me). They cannot consider anything else but the results that effect business process, cash flow or sales. So here is the question: What are the benefits of web standards for small business that can be sufficiently measured in results for the business both in the long and short term? and a second question is How do we, as a group start to bring the message to the masses? Articles reviewed in the process of thinking about this subject: http://www.molly.com/2005/11/14/web-standards-and-the-new-professionalism/ http://www.websitegoodies.com/article/38 http://www.adaptivepath.com/publications/essays/archives/000266.php http://webstandards.org/learn/reference/web_standards_for_business.html http://developer.mozilla.org/en/docs/The_Business_Benefits_of_Web_Standards After I wrote the above post I did find the following article useful.It answers some of the questions I pose but again it is speaking the wrong language to the wrong crowd for me: http://www.maccaws.org/kit/way-forward/ I am looking for a way to make small business owners see that they have now sane alternative but to use web standards, not tell them they will be ahead of the curve or save $100/year on hosting. All the best, Jay -- Jay Gilmore U)SmashingRed Web & Marketing B)Jay Gilmore's SmashingRed Blog P) 902.529.0651 E) [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: [WSG] Web Standards Shetland Ponies
heretic wrote: I wanted to understand why this happened. Is standards only really something a small contingent of geeky developers go for? I think it's fair to say that standards developers are still the minority, but that doesn't make them wrong. "What's right is not always popular, what's popular is not always right." How very true. Probably mostly done by larger design firms, which tend to be using older techniques. When your profit margins are up, it's easier to get comfortable I think. Also, most clients still aren't aware of standards/accessibility/usability; they're still judging sites on how they look and what the first few users say. As I said earlier in the high horse thread, we (standards oriented developers) have not yet provided adequate answers for business to take to their buddies and say " We just built our website around standards and it was the best thing we ever did!" Yes, that's true. What really sets off the standards crowd is when the reasons are really bad, and/or people are hostile to standards. The trap is expecting and assuming the worst of reasons, I guess :) I don't know if this is true or not. What I do know is that business doesn't care about standards because no one from THEIR group of peers have told them to. If you had some of the biggest names in marketing and business saying you should build around standards for such and such a result to the overall competitiveness of the company, then you would have standards all over. What I have said and will continue to say is that it is not our jobs as a community to sell standards to our clients -- we can do it on a one-on-one basis -- as a community we need to sell standards to the people business looks to for answers -- Marketing Gurus, Accountants, Consulting firms, Business Reporters and Pundits. Business owners rarely want to be first adopters unless they are true entrepreneurs and don't care if they flounder on their way to the top. Most business owners make decisions because it is the accepted thing to do, the cheapest thing to do or the thing to do because they look or seem better as a person or a company. When you have people like Vincent Flanders and Jakob Nielsen talking about usability to fortune 500 companies and to web design conferences etc. they both acknowledge the bottom line and the sacrificial choices companies must make to ensure viability and usefulness you don't hear them talking about whether or not the site used a clearing div at the bottom of their site or a hack in their CSS. The only way that we will ever gain wide acceptance (I sound like some sort of human rights activist) is to make business demand it because they will not be competitive without standards based design. Jay Jay Gilmore U)SmashingRed Web & Marketing B)Jay Gilmore's SmashingRed Blog P) 902.529.0651 E) [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: [WSG] Background-Image download order
Nick Gleitzman wrote: On 2 Feb 2006, at 1:24 PM, Ric Raftis wrote: Nick Gleitzman wrote: Boring, but multiple CSS files, one for each page, containing only the bg image declarations for that page. Maybe I've missed something, but why wouldn't you just have the one css file but declare the background image in the head section of each individual page? You could, of course, but I use external files for the same reason that I don't include the whole CSS file in the - separation of of content and presentation. What about SSI or PHP. I have used this for conditional class application in navigations I don't see why you couldn't use it for applying to stylesheet insertion. For navigation where I use image replacement I use a single image and use the background image positioning to handle the various states. This way the whole nav loads at the same time and there is no need for _javascript_ preloads. This makes me think that I should put all my background images on one image for an entire site. That might be a cool experiment. Has any one tried this? Jay Jay Gilmore U)SmashingRed Web & Marketing B)Jay Gilmore's SmashingRed Blog P) 902.529.0651 E) [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: [WSG] IE7 Now what?
Todd Baker wrote: Thats a big call Ted. Ill be happy to see that back of IE6 as much as anyone but I think it will be well into next year before IE7 overtakes IE6, even if they do roll it into XP SP3. Your right tho... We need to start planning for it. On 02/02/06, Ted Drake <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: I will put my neck out on a limb right now and say that the majority of your traffic by the end of October will have the ability to use :hover pseudo classes, first-child, alpha-transparency png graphics, attribute selectors, etc. I am just trying to plan ahead. I don't want to be building sites that have issues that I have to go back and fix when the GA release comes out. I have three sites with issues and want to correct them but also fear that it is to early to rely on the rendering in the current beta 2. I just don't want to be stuck with 10 projects on the go only to find that NOW I have to address these issues. -Jay ** 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] Norton Problems was Firefox being naughty
I've known Norton Internet Security to cause problems with pages before, which are fixed by disabling it, though I've never been able to work out exactly why it causes problems at all. Lachlan, I encountered this with one of my sites and it is because I used an image in a folder that was named "banner". I looked into the advanced settings for Internet Ad Blocking and it has a filter list and banner is one of the blocked words. I suspect the issue could either be in the filename or pathname(which was my case). It sucks for two reasons because: 1. if the list is visible from within the app, all advertisers have to do is change naming of filenames and pathnames, and 2. if Norton further tries to filter content in the headers and other content of the page it may end up wrecking more and more legitimate pages. All the best, Jay ** 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: Moral High-horse
Paolo Dodet wrote: Lachlan wrote: The problem is that many people see the issue as "what will happen if I don't follow standards?"; whereas the questions they should be asking are "what are the benefits of following standards?", "how much easier/faster is it to develop with standards?", etc. This statement is very true If the whole matter were addressed this way, IMHO we would have two major benefits: 1. Clear understanding of our role within the society as a whole and the www community as part of that whole. I don't know how this is true as we can only really know our role within a small portion of the www community within society. There are way too many subcultures in the development and design community. There are the DW users and the former graphic designers who are all over WYSIWYG editing and the tag soup makers and the perpetual transitionals (Doctypes) and the M$Word doc converters, FrontPage zealots, template selling shills, and more. Then there are the people who are just unplugged from any community and develop in a bubble at home on whatever software they were told to buy at school. So that being said we don't have a clear role unless we are to be self proclaimed pundits. Some more puntidtious (word?) than others. 2. Easyness in communicating this concept to others (clients and/or other webdesigners), since they will be clear to us in the first place. True(ish). But why do we have to continue to set ourselves on a course for a long up hill climb to never know where the peak is. I have felt for a while that the WSG and WASP need to have a clear public relations and communications strategy. If we, as the standards oriented, can agree on certain principles that can be easily made into a total cost accounting for the case for web standards to business and clients and get ourselves out of the proverbial lab with the technology then we can get on with innovating and the day to day business of web development. I consider myself as a serious student of standards based development and this ng has been a tremendous help to it but we need to stop preaching constantly to the converted and go out there and like Seth Godin and Guy Kawasaki get ourselves some standards evangelists. Clients who have implemented sites on standards and saved money, development time, upgrade headaches, forward compatibility etc. While I am a developer, I am still a businessperson who understands that the little details should never stand in the way of making a decision and to deliver a good product now --perfect it later. Cash flow and operation is most important to business. Some of the members of this group are students, interested hobbyists or just plain code freaks -- learn lots, make great websites. But for us website developers building a business around web standards development, I want to get past the point of critical mass for the knowledge and acceptance of web standards in the business community so that when I talk about it to clients they don't glaze over and even so they are asking for it. BTW this is the best ng I have ever been in -- even if people do think they see high-horses. And if you think things are at all nasty here (which they are not), I used to subscribe to the Slackware ng, and when Patrick V.(Slack's Developer and owner) got some mystery illness and people though he was going to die, there were flame wars and personal attacks like no other.
Re: Re: [WSG] IE7 Now what?
Thanks, but I fail to see what this has to do with the Beta 2 version. The Beta 2 version is installed on top of IE 6 and acts as it should so far. I am assuming that they have fixed any issues with Beta 1 before releasing a public beta. I have uninstalled it and all works fine in IE6 but what I want to make sure is that I can fix issues with my previous designs so that they don't remain broken in IE7 when it is in GA release. I will restate my question to be more clear: Are there any resources, index, tables or references on specific differences between IE7 box model and other browsers that will enable me to check and correct for layout issues that will exist on designs in IE 7? I don't want to have to try tweaking every single line of my stylesheets to GUESS if I have fixed it (as we all know, just because it LOOKS right in the browser doesn't mean that it IS right). There are two places I have found issues. One relates to display:table-cell and display: table. In addition I have some odd margins/padding issues with one site that doesn't exist in other sites with similar layout. All the best, Jay Jay Gilmore U)SmashingRed Web & Marketing B)Jay Gilmore's SmashingRed Blog P) 902.529.0651 E) [EMAIL PROTECTED] Miles Davies wrote: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/12/19/ie7beta_patch_glitch/ You should think twice before installing any Microsoft Better products. On 01/02/06, Jay Gilmore <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: I have downloaded IE7 Beta 2 and I have looked at a couple of my sites. I have found some problems (never mind how slow the programs is). I use some * html hacks and some display: inline block tricks to emulate tables in IE's 6 and lower. Are there resources for ways to fix these hacks that are backward compatible or is the only way the method suggested by IE team which is to use conditional comments in the *head* and use a separate stylesheet? Jay -- Jay Gilmore U)SmashingRed Web & Marketing B)Jay Gilmore's SmashingRed Blog P) 902.529.0651 E) [EMAIL PROTECTED]
[WSG] IE7 Now what?
I have downloaded IE7 Beta 2 and I have looked at a couple of my sites. I have found some problems (never mind how slow the programs is). I use some * html hacks and some display: inline block tricks to emulate tables in IE's 6 and lower. Are there resources for ways to fix these hacks that are backward compatible or is the only way the method suggested by IE team which is to use conditional comments in the *head* and use a separate stylesheet? Jay -- Jay Gilmore U)SmashingRed Web & Marketing B)Jay Gilmore's SmashingRed Blog P) 902.529.0651 E) [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Moral High-horse - was Re: [WSG] Failed Redesign and the Media
russ - maxdesign wrote: *snip Completely agree. The most common off-list comments I receive are along the lines of "a great list, very helpful, but sometimes a bit of attitude". *snip Part of the reason I stopped reading the list was that I was getting so many threads filled with near religious extremism regarding this recommendation or that method. It got to the point where I went to digest mode and then stopped reading it even though I feel that it was one of the most useful groups I have ever been involved in. I have come back because I am hungry for discussion on web standards. Thanks to Russ, Jay Jay Gilmore Developer/Consultant Affordable Websites and Marketing Solutions for Real Small Business. SmashingRed Web & Marketing P) 902.529.0651 E) [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: [WSG] 2 Q: New web site, which DTD I should use? and Compresion
So even if a site is written fully XHTML 1.0 Strict compliant, and validates as such, it is still recommended to use HTML 4.01 Strict? Francesco Francesco, Many list members here are going to suggest that you use HTML 4.01 instead as technically what the user agents (browsers in this case) receive is not XHTML as the Recommendation indicates which is as XML. What the browsers almost always receive is text/html. I used to question this whole thing and then I thought to myself there is no real point to use the XHTML anyway since it isn't served as the W3C recommends. Many developers are moved to use XHTML because others have or because it was newer than 4.01. That doesn't mean they were right in either case. Coding in 4.01 Strict is little different from XHTML except for the XML tag closure requirement and not using XHTML 1.0 strict served as html/text goes against the way it was intended to be served. Unfortunately there is much heated debate here often about this as the W3C's recommendations are so easy to interpret with slightly different outcomes for many people. All I would do is try to think about why you chose XHTML for your document. Is it because it is the correct doctype to use, the newer doctype or the popular doctype. I have gone to 4.01 Strict from XHTML 1.0 because I realised I was following the pack because it was the new, cool doctype, used by people I admire and look up to. Just because they are using it doesn't make it right. All the best, Jay Gilmore Developer/Consultant Affordable Websites and Marketing Solutions for Real Small Business. SmashingRed Web & Marketing P) 902.529.0651 E) [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: [WSG] Site Check Please (Clattco)
Kenny Graham (thoughtfully) wrote: With larger text sizes, your sidebar headings become white on white. I'd suggest vertically expanding that background image, or setting a similar background color along with the image. That and a few things like empty paragraph elements and stray on some of the pages. Thanks for that. I will be shortening the title for the "See What Our Clients Are Saying" heading but increasing the size of the background image is a great idea as well. Thanks. I know that there are some empty elements as I am still placing copy. Just wanted to ask for opinions and suggestions at this stage. Thanks for the help and all the best, Jay ** 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] Site Check Please (Clattco)
Hello All, I would like to know if I have made any huge gaffes with this site (http://www.smashingred.com/clientspace/clattco/). Nearly complete and just requires copywriting completion. Specifically the following are of interest: Rendering on mac in Safari and IE, Usability, Mistakes I may have made out of ignorance, Issues of semantics etc, and Accessibility (not required by client but I want to get better at this). All opinions are welcome. If there are mistakes out of ignorance please point me to a reference for correction. Sincerely, Jay Gilmore ** 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] Best Web Standards thing I learnt in 2005.
Rimantas Liubertas wrote: 2005/12/22, Jay Gilmore <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>: <...> Still looking for a valid replacement to the IE CSS, display: inline-block; thing... What am I missing? display: inline-block is perfectly valid in CSS2.1 Is your problem that CSS validator defaults to CSS2 profile? You can change that selecting CSS2.1 for "Profile" in [2]. Sorry, if I misunderstood your statement. [1] http://www.w3.org/TR/CSS21/visuren.html#propdef-display [2] http://jigsaw.w3.org/css-validator/validator-uri Regards, Rimantas Many thanks! It is always a pleasure being given a polite boot-in-the-a$$. I guess I'll be reading the 2.1 spec over the holiday. 2nd best thing I learned from this group -- inline-block is valid -- and -- I can change the default settings in Pederick's Toolbar. All the best, Jay
Re: [WSG] Best Web Standards thing I learnt in 2005.
Semantics in mark-up. Minimize Div's and Span use. Still looking for a valid replacement to the IE CSS, display: inline-block; thing... All the best, Jay Paul Noone wrote: It's a God-send. If only it had been properly explained sooner. Fortunately my recent conversion to virtually tableless websites means I do't have many changes to make. :) -- Paul A Noone Webmaster, ASHM [EMAIL PROTECTED] -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] On Behalf Of Vlad Alexander (XStandard) Sent: Thursday, 22 December 2005 9:56 AM To: wsg@webstandardsgroup.org Subject: Re: [WSG] Best Web Standards thing I learnt in 2005. Hi Terrence, The summary attribute is best used to describe the structure of the table, not to summarise it's content. Thanks for sharing that with us. Can you please let me know the source of this info? Anybody else have an opinion on this? Regards, -Vlad http://xstandard.com Original Message From: Terrence Wood Date: 12/21/2005 4:22 PM The best web standards thing I learnt in 2005 is: How to best use the summary attribute for screen reader users: The summary attribute is best used to describe the structure of the table, not to summarise it's content. A longer summary is better according to actual screen reader user testing. How do you know if your summary works, if you don't have any screen reader users to test with? You need two people, someone to read the summary and someone to draw the table. Read your summary aloud and see what the other person draws. If the result resembles your table then you are on the right track =) Example from complex financial table: summary="There are 8 columns. Column 1 names the appropriation and labels the row or rowgroup. Columns 2 through 5 report the numbers for 2004/5, where column 2 is Budgeted Annual, column 3 is Budgeted Other, column 4 is Estimated Actual Annual, column 5 is Estimated Actual Other. Columns 6 through 7 report the numbers for 2005/6 where column 6 is Vote Annual, column 7 is Vote Other. Column 8 contains narrative on the scope of the appropriation. Rows are grouped by appropriation type." (yep.. "rowgroup" is jargon, but most people got it... you could say "group of rows") HTH, please share your discovery in 2005. kind regards Terrence Wood. ** The discussion list for http://webstandardsgroup.org/ See http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm for some hints on posting to the list & getting help ** ** The discussion list for http://webstandardsgroup.org/ See http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm for some hints on posting to the list & getting help ** ** 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] Could really use some help with image overflow
Barrie North wrote: Hi all, I have a fluid layout and for the life of me can’t get the image to be “cropped” as the screen adjusts. Here is the link: http://www.compassdesigns.net/joomlashack/ If you resize the window the image will stay on top. I have played with z-index, overflow:hidden. I can’t for the life of me get this to work. Anyone fancy jumping in and pointing out the obvious thing I am missing J ? Barrie North Personally, I would make the image the background of the header div. It doesn't add anything but aesthetics and isn't required for a person to understand the page or the content. All the best, Jay
Re: [WSG] Setting Up Font Sizes
Felix Miata wrote: snip> In fact, most must have done at least some personalization, since most hit statistics that say the most common screen resolution is 1024x768 even though old versions of doze default to 640x480 and newer to 800x600, and signicant numbers are above the median. It might appear that way but for many home and small biz users they are getting systems from major PC co's and these systems come with preconfigured OS's with a default resolution higher than 800X600 usually if the bottom system is shipping with a 17" monitor Dell, Gateway, HP and Compaq ship with resolutions optimized for the 17" monitor. In addition more and more LCD's are being installed everywhere. The native resolutions for 17" LCD is usually 1024X768 or greater and it either changes the Windows display settings on install or suggests that in order to make it work the setting be changed. I also know that the stats for my site are skewed because the visitors are high web users using Firefox and probably know how to adjust for them. Visually impaired users who have their systems configured probably know how to increase the font sizes. Users like my parents and my in-laws probably don't even know that you can change font sizes. That being said it use a larger font size for my sites and client sites when I can. All the best, Jay ** 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] Site Critic
This is a standards group and as such I think it would be best if you checked your sites in a browser that was more standards compliant than IE6 both of these layouts break in Firefox 1.5. On top of it all this is a tables based layout that doesn't even work cross browser. There is nothing in this layout that couldn't be accomplished using Cascading Style Sheets. Your page doesn't validate according to doctype HTML 4.01 and you have all sorts of deprecated tag usage such as font. Honestly, you are making a bold move by posting these sites to this group. All the best, Jay Boteler, Cheree wrote: Hi everyone: I was wondering if any of you would be willing to look at my new sites and critic them. Any comments would be great! Thanks! http://econdev.sierrapacific.com http://econdev.nevadapower.com Cheree Boteler Web Marketing Consultant Economic Development Sierra Pacific Power Company 6100 Neil Road Reno, NV 89501 [EMAIL PROTECTED] (775) 834.3755 Fax: (775) 834.3384
Re: [WSG] Site Check please
kvnmcwebn wrote: pretty cool jay, what about the top links bottom border disapearing on the hover though? -kvnmcwebn kvnmcwebn, Are you talking about my site: http://www.smashingred.com or Joe's site: http://www.sitesbyjoe.com ? All the best, Jay Jay Gilmore Developer/Consultant Affordable Websites and Marketing Solutions for Real Small Business. SmashingRed Web & Marketing P) 902.529.0651 E) [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: [WSG] Site Check please
Joseph R. B. Taylor wrote: Guys and Gals, I have just switched my site to a fluid layout vs. the old 750 pixels wide approach. I have also changed all my font sizes to em's to adjust as needed. Can people in mac and linux take a glance to make sure all is well for me? Thanks, Joe Taylor http://sitesbyjoe.com Joe, The site "looks" ok but I have a few of comments: Why are you using a transitional doctype? What elements or deprecated attributes are you using that require this? Why are you using " for spacing? There are ways to create white space etc. without using unsemantic markup? How about adding the padding or margin to a class relating to the content that requires the extra space before or after. Why are you using spans to achieve what could and probably should be accomplished using an , , or element? Specifically, you are using a span to style the larger text of the article titles. You are also using spans for the article date where you could use the classes on paragraphs. All the best, Jay BTW: My own site is not perfect so go ahead and rip it apart. When I finish my next few projects I will be revamping it. Jay Gilmore Developer/Consultant Affordable Websites and Marketing Solutions for Real Small Business. SmashingRed Web & Marketing P) 902.529.0651 E) [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] talking points for standards
Robert O'Neill wrote: If I wanted new windows in my house I'd buy from the BS Standard compliant company every time, wouldn't you ? Well I dunno? I am in Canada and I am assuming this might be the same as the Canadian Standards Association (CSA). In North America BS stands for BullS#it. so your comment fails to communicate to me fully what you mean. The thing is though, if I click on the BS Standard logo it can't prove to me that the company is actually compliant , however in our industry, we as web designers can use our W3C logos to prove the point, by linking them to the validators. A better comparison is the Better Business Bureau. Most people (in participating countries) know who the BBB is because the organization lobbies the public and consumers to educate and inform consumers about its members and its mission. It even hunts downs and goes after business who use their logo without authorization or membership. Some might find this argument slightly flaky as a BS Standard is an acknowledgment of quality rather than validity. The problem we have though is that until the consequences of legislation fully kick in (DDA etc) we are still being allowed to regulate ourselves and W3C validation seems to be the only option available. So I'll continue to add W3C validation logos to my sites until an official Govt. Standard is set. Considering the UK Government bases most of its current web standards (eGIF, NHS Standards etc) on W3C recommendations, I'll hopefully be in a decent position should that ever happen. Rob O. Rob, I don't think legislating how businesses decide to build websites is of any value or has any place, as they don't have any impact on the public at large, if a business wants to build a crap site, much like hanging a sign that no one can understand, it is, and should be, their right to make whatever they want. If governments wish to set out policy for contractors building sites for and with the government then go for it. I don't really have a problem with the W3C logos per se, except we cannot expect them to have any impact on anyone other than the already converted. If you are placing them there as some hope to convince a business owner to switch to you because you comply with some unknown standard --you are going to waste bytes and bandwidth. All I was suggesting is that the industry create meaning in the buttons for business by marketing standards to business and not to one another.
Re: [WSG] talking points for standards
I thought of a number of points relating to this standards issue... The icons by w3c and others are meaningless and are a problem. They need to have meaning to the reader. The average web visitor doesn't even know that the W3C exists, let alone that they make recommendations or determine structure and validity. When I first moved into the realm of writing better code (still honing skills) I didn't know what they were.In order to create meaning it has to represent actual value, ROI or benefit to users and buyers of our services. We, as developers need to be talking, not to the individual business owner but to business leaders in each segment and show them, not tell them how this will benefit them. I belong to several business forums and nowhere are you going to see a discussion of web standards and accessibility as most of these people don't know what that don't know. They all feel that how a site looks determines quality. Like it or not -- the only measure of the success of a website is the return on investment or an increase in profits or some other metric. If a business can achieve that with tag soup they are going to be happy. But most small business owners don't even consider this point. They just want a website, so they hire a firm that has websites they like to look at or that look good. We as an industry need to band together and make standards mean something that business owners can't live without. No FUD just a commitment by a segment of our industry that support web standards and that promotes the benefit to business consistently and continually. We need to stop preaching to the choir and build broad awareness that business is getting short changed but "design" firms who do website design are playing jack of all trades (although I would argue that web firms cannot be mutually exclusive to marketing). We need to create an environment that will make decision makers say to themselves, "Where can I get me a standards-based, accessible site?" This whole argument of licensing and regulation is ridiculous because like most regulations there will be segments of the industry that lobby to keep eligibility for the standards to an absolute low or argue that this standard is designed to be protectionist. Why don't we make it that the tag soup chefs have no choice but get on board by creating client demand for clean efficient code. Strictly on the topic of this thread, one point I make to clients is that the code will be easily edited by anyone in the future and will require no special software to modify and therefore cost less to maintain. I don't usually get into these discussions with clients though because my local competitors can't even make good looking tag soup -- so I win be default. That will eventually change. All the best, Jay Jay Gilmore Developer/Consultant Affordable Websites and Marketing Solutions for Real Small Business. SmashingRed Web & Marketing P) 902.529.0651 E) [EMAIL PROTECTED] Ric & Jude Raftis wrote: You are absolutely correct Andreas. Bit the same as an Australian Safety Standard, or Certificate of Electrical Compliance and the myriad of other bits of pieces of terminology and standards that we live with every day. But if we don't educate the public, how will they ever learn. The tag soup coders certainly won't tell them! I certainly don't think it's about designers "stroking" their egos. If it's compliant then tell the world, the visitors but MORE importantly.tell the client! Make them proud to have the icon on their site. Regards, Ric Andreas Boehmer [Addictive Media] wrote: These icons with "AAA", "W3C", "HTML", "XHTML" on it only confuse most users. So often in usability tests I have heard users ask me: "What does this mean"? ** 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] talking points for standards
Do you really want those customers who want to maintain their pages in Frontage only to load up your design with unoptimized images, tables and tag sludge? You put this site in your portfolio and a prospect goes to visit your butchered site. These clients are also the worst for taking up too much time. I am focused on small business but I am not desperate for work. I don't do crap jobs for crap clients. If I have a challenging client it is someone who has engaged my services on my terms. I don't push standards, I build ever better sites. When I do something of note for my client I let them know. I don't know if you will ever be able promote standards to small business. You will have better luck with larger companies. I think I may take some of the suggestions in this article and formulate a case for standards adoption for publication on my site. All the best, Jay Jay Gilmore Developer/Consultant Affordable Websites and Marketing Solutions for Real Small Business. SmashingRed Web & Marketing P) 902.529.0651 E) [EMAIL PROTECTED] Bert Doorn wrote: G'day Dollars and cents is the language that will convince most, if not all, sceptics. The problem I face in that regard is that a lot of sales enquiries I get are from people who want to maintain their own site, for next to nothing. They don't want to spend money on a content management system (which is overkill anyway, if the updates are few and far between). Many think they can maintain a site with Frontpage, which, after all, is relatively cheap. I can't help them, unless I throw standards compliance out the door. As far as (server) bandwidth is concerned, it only matters for big sites with a lot of traffic, or sites with a host that provides a ridiculously low quota. When it comes to search engines, can anyone prove that lean code is better? Has anyone done research on this claim? Google is full of tagsoup sites that are highly ranked. I searched for "web design" in Google (pages from Australia only). The top 3 (non sponsored) sites used tables for layout, none of them validated and only one had a doctype. They all used some CSS but only in addition to the tagsoup. So where are the benefits? Regards
Re: [WSG] 2-col question
Samuel Richardson wrote:
#sidebar
{
float : right;
width : 190px;
}
#content
{
margin-right : 190px;
}
This is the exact design of my site http://www.smashignred.com except
the side bar is on the left. I wrap the content and the sidebar in a
pagewrapper and then do as above. The numbers are different though. I
have the sidebar width of 180px and the left margin of the content box
is 220px which gives me a simple space without having to ad padding.
Jay Gilmore
Developer/Consultant
Affordable Websites and Marketing Solutions for
Real Small Business.
SmashingRed Web & Marketing
P) 902.529.0651
E) [EMAIL PROTECTED]
ivanovitch wrote:
Folks - you've helped out before, and I'm
asking again. Pardon if this
sounds all too simple, but I've yet to find a solution either in this
list's archives, or on the web.
I'm trying to create a fluid layout with two columns, but whilst the
left column is variable width, the right column (sidebar) is to be a
fixed width (190px). This is entirely because the right column
contains an image in every instance. But I want the left column to
take up the remainder of the space (viewport width - 190px).
Everything that I've seen or reviewed works fine if I wish to break
the columns by percentage, or pixel widths on both. And min-width
doesn't seem to work for IE.
Having divved up some non-table examples using the usual suspects, my
efforts result in my finding that when making the viewport window very
small (or when enlarging the text to huge sizes), the left column
slides under the righthand column.
Do I need to use double-divs to set a width for the troublesome right
column? The most frustrating part of this is using tables and cells,
this is a no-brainer.
I'd show you an example of where I'm at, but my test site is down at
the moment.
**
The discussion list for http://webstandardsgroup.org/
See http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm
for some hints on posting to the list & getting help
**
**
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] Newcomers and Web Standards
Lori Cole wrote: I think I will start attending a local user group rather than using this list as I think people behave differently face to face and maybe some women will be there. Thanks for those of you that have commented constructively about IE and tidy. I took an HTML II online course with HWG and they do not even mention text editors exist and would have saved me a lot of time. I am just using Notepad now to write SCRICT code and rather than reaching for a reference book to remember a small detail or rather than running it through a validator, I thought a text editor might help. I can certainly research text editors myself but thought my question would be interesting for this list to address in terms of trying to stick to standards. Lori Lori I would try to find an editor that can offer you some enhanced features for editing and managing code as well as to increase the speed with which you can develop code. I mentioned earlier on this list that I use HTML-Kit (http://www.chami.com/html-kit/). I also use NotePad++ (http://notepad-plus.sourceforge.net/uk/site.htm) both of these programs offer line numbering and code colorization. These are the two most important features you can have over notepad. If you need to debug or are validating you need to know what line numbers you have. Other features that are a benefit are element folding/collapsing which Notepad++ has so if you are only wanting to look at parent elements and not their child elements it makes this easier. I suppose this would help lost in DOM scripting, though I am only learning about this. The reason I use HTML-Kit is that it is highly customizable and that it allows for me to default to whatever DTD I want. In addition, there are hundreds of plug ins and addons. The other and the main reason I use it is that I can file manage from the application and it allows for local or FTP file editing. There are all sorts of free text editors though and I would try as many of them as possible. They mostly all just be text editors but some people swear by them. Hope this helps. All the best, Jay ** 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] editor
Artemis wrote:
Could
you pretty please elaborate on "rubbish"? I mean, I know what you're
saying, but I am curious as to
what code Frontpage and Dreamweaver puts out that is rubbish. I've seen
it said so many times, but no one
ever elaborates.
Many thanks,
Artemis
Artemis,
I am not one of the web standards gurus here but FrontPage, Dreamweaver
(DW) and almost all other WYSIWYG editors by design cannot interpret
your visual design based decisions. They are unable to determine the
meaning of content and are only aimed at one end -- to achieve visually
what you design in layout/design view. They sacrifice clean, efficient
mark-up for the end result."If it looks good in preview mode it is
done" is the method or madness of these applications.
When I first started really getting into web design I began with DW and
found that I liked what I saw but as I learned about cross-browser
compatibility, then download speeds and optimization, I found I was
spending so much time in the design view fixing stuff that I realized
there was a better way. On top of everything else you have to contend
with the weird and wild markup created by these programs. You either
ended up with nested table after nested table and images sliced up like
teriyaki steak or css inline styles like
style=".msp101{font-weight:bold}" or styles at the page top with no
discernable meaning other than the order in which it was created.
Once you realize that you can create efficient clean meaningful code,
faster and then be able to edit files that you haven't touched for a
year without a special editor you will understand why Dreamweaver and
FrontPage(Microsoft doesn't use it-- that should tell you something)
are not desirable for editing good code. Dreamweaver can be configured
to edit in code view but it requires so much system resources to do it
--it nearly cripples my new laptop with PhotoShop CS2 running at the
same time. I personally use HTML-Kit (chami.com) and have used various
Linux and Win32 editors. The text editor of choice for me is Notepad++.
There are many editors out there find and try as many as you can,
choose the ones you like and find the efficiencies in them and start
writing great code faster and better than you ever could in a
WYSIWYG-BIS(But It's Poo[family friendly version]) editor.
All the best,
Jay
Jay Gilmore
Developer/Consultant
Affordable Websites and Marketing Solutions for Real
Small Business.
SmashingRed Web & Marketing
P) 902.529.0651
E) [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: [WSG] standards, semantics and strict/valid Script Sources
I am honestly looking for resources. Any help in this would be great. Jay Jay Gilmore wrote: I wanted to know if there are resources like HotScripts etc. that provide code that is standards oriented, semantic and use valid and/or strict doctypes? I hate always having to hack the hell out of scripts etc to remove tables and replace semantics etc. Jay -- Jay Gilmore Developer/Consultant Affordable Websites and Marketing Solutions for Real Small Business. SmashingRed Web & Marketing P) 902.529.0651 E) [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: [WSG] FF1.5 and Web Dev. T/B
Stephen Stagg wrote: > Is it just me or does the ‘Disable Images’ option on the Web > Developers Toolbar not work with FF1.5? >>Yes. When I choose this option, it refreshes the page but all the images >>still seem to appear. >>When I disabled images at first, it didn’t disable them but I’ve gone back to a number of sites and my images are disabled. Now I can’t get them back on! >>Bill Scheider I ended up uninstalling FF1.5 and deleting my profile and reinstalling all my extenstions. The only bad thing about this is that I neglected to backup the stored passwords data and now I have to remember all my passwords. Darn. -Best, Jay Jay Gilmore Developer/Consultant Affordable Websites and Marketing Solutions for Real Small Business. SmashingRed Web & Marketing P) 902.529.0651 E) [EMAIL PROTECTED]
[WSG] Wanted: standards, semantics and strict/valid Script Sources
I wanted to know if there are resources like HotScripts etc. that provide code that is standards oriented, semantic and use valid and/or strict doctypes? I hate always having to hack the hell out of scripts etc to remove tables and replace semantics etc. Jay -- Jay Gilmore Developer/Consultant Affordable Websites and Marketing Solutions for Real Small Business. SmashingRed Web & Marketing P) 902.529.0651 E) [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: [WSG] FF1.5 and Web Dev. T/B
Stephen Stagg wrote: Is it just me or does the ‘Disable Images’ option on the Web Developers Toolbar not work with FF1.5? Stephen Isn't working on mine either. Images disappear for 2 seconds and reload. Jay Gilmore
Re: [WSG] firefox 1.5 is official
The one extension set that no longer works and I haven't found a solution is the libraries for Spellbound. I am not sure where to find the libraries. They are available at for Thunderbird. I really do use it alot for blogging and forum posting. -best. Jay Jay Gilmore Developer/Consultant Affordable Websites and Marketing Solutions for Real Small Business. SmashingRed Web & Marketing P) 902.529.0651 E) [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: [WSG] firefox 1.5 is official
Felix Miata wrote: Does the Web Developer Extension run in it with your old profile without fussing with it? I've been using both, but web dev only in 1.0.7 and separate profiles for each. Yes. I just installed 1.5 into the 1.07 folder and of the 20 extensions I have installed only 3 didn't update or function. Jay Gilmore Developer/Consultant Affordable Websites and Marketing Solutions for Real Small Business. SmashingRed Web & Marketing P) 902.529.0651 E) [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: [WSG] Browser check & Site crit please
Richard Stephenson wrote: Hi everyone, I just joined this list and I have just plucked up courage to ask you all to subject me to the humilitation that is my first site check! I have been working on my blog http://www.donkeymagic.co.uk Richard, Looks pretty good. Here are a couple minor comments: A little dark -- not sure what sort of style / feeling you are going for. The contrast for the links at the bottom vs. the background is very low. It is hard to read on my CRT @ 1024X768. Why not make the links in the left column all the same width? You can make the elements block and apply a width to create the same size. It the uneven grey backgrounds are a little distracting. Jay Gilmore Developer/Consultant Affordable Websites and Marketing Solutions for Real Small Business. SmashingRed Web & Marketing P) 902.529.0651 E) [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: [WSG] Call for Site Check
Matt Harris wrote: Just re-worked my photography site: www.focusontheclouds.com and wanted to get your opinions. I've strayed into new territory - opting for a slightly-risky, dark background instead of sticking with a classic white background. I'm interested to hear if you think it works... It looks very good. A couple of minor points: I find the graphic text on the slide rollovers a little hard to read -- especially the light on the over state. This, I think might be tough for people with lower contrast or smaller monitors. Is clicking on the cloud banner supposed to be an easter egg. There is no indication or direction that it rotates (loads new) lot of slides. I like it but you should tell people or at least give more than a hint than the outside border color change on hover. All the best, Jay
Re: [WSG] page break up
Christian Montoya wrote: Lord Vader's Former Handle, Anakin link, visited, focus, hover, active Always in that order! Yeah -- that's it! -Jay Jay Gilmore Developer/Consultant Affordable Websites and Marketing Solutions for Real Small Business. SmashingRed Web & Marketing P) 902.529.0651 E) [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: [WSG] page break up
Lori, I am going to suggest that you download Firefox or Mozilla to develop with. You will find that IE is too forgiving and allows errors to fall through the cracks by trying to render the page vs. not parsing invalid code.It is better to learn to make it right and then tweak it for IE. I have a couple of things below: Your CSS doesn't actually validate. Please check it and correct all errors. When styling your the pseudo classes, hover, active, visited. The way to ensure that the cascade works is through the "LoVe HAte" a:link, a:visited, a:hover (a:focus), a:active. I read somewhere that there was is a Star Wars reference that takes the focus into consideration. Try not to use absolute measurements other than pixels as they are rendered and or represented differently on different browsers and platforms. Using cm and inches is fine for printing stylesheets but can cause layout problems on screen. All the best, Jay Jay Gilmore Developer/Consultant Affordable Websites and Marketing Solutions for Real Small Business. SmashingRed Web & Marketing P) 902.529.0651 E) [EMAIL PROTECTED] Lori Cole wrote: Hi-I am new to CSS and strict. The URL I am having trouble with is http://members.cox.net/loricole.newhome.html. The style sheet is at http://members.cox.net.loricole/newtext.css. As you use the navigations tabs and go back to the home page, the blue background breaks up the white index card. Refreshing the screen stops it unless you tab through and cursor back again. I have IE v6. Also, I was intending for the hover of the tabs to be yellow but that does not happen. Thank you for any help. Lori
Re: [WSG] page break up
Jay Gilmore Developer/Consultant Affordable Websites and Marketing Solutions for Real Small Business. SmashingRed Web & Marketing P) 902.529.0651 E) [EMAIL PROTECTED] Lori Cole wrote: Thanks Scott, The correct order of those elements is doing the trick. Yellow appears. I did change the CSS comments to be the CSS format but that has altered some other page's format like the form entry windows and text alignment in the client page. The blue line still appears on the home page. Lori -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] On Behalf Of Scott Swabey - Lafinboy Productions Sent: Sunday, November 27, 2005 9:20 PM To: wsg@webstandardsgroup.org Subject: RE: [WSG] page break up Hi Lori Your issue with the tabs can be quickly fixed by switching the order in your css of the #menu a:visited and #menu a:hover, so the hover is 'above' the visited declaration. The page break up looks like a guillotine bug. Need to dig more to find the cause for that! Regards Scott Swabey Lafinboy Productions www.lafinboy.com Lori Cole wrote: Subject: [WSG] page break up Also, I was intending for the hover of the tabs to be yellow but that does not happen. Thank you for any help. Lori ** The discussion list for http://webstandardsgroup.org/ See http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm for some hints on posting to the list & getting help ** ** 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] Casual Friday[Drop-Down Menus]
I am with you on that. I don't feel that dropdowns are as user friendly as they could be. I think people should be directed to the information they are using by providing descriptive top level navigation, contextual linking and logical 2nd level navigation within the context of the related main subsection. Site maps and search utilities are also a good way to ensure that people will get to the info or goal. Jay Jay Gilmore Developer/Consultant Affordable Websites and Marketing Solutions for Real Small Business. SmashingRed Web & Marketing P) 902.529.0651 E) [EMAIL PROTECTED] Chris Kennon wrote: Hi, I've adopted the philosophy, drop down menus are a surrogate for detailed Information Architecture. Sub-navigation should be introduced on internal pages to navigate sub-sections. Before passing this along to clients as mantra, I thought seeking the advice of the participants of the list advantageous. Respectfully, Chris ** 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] Overlapping footer
Stevio wrote: Hi Jay, Thanks for that, but floating the footer left instead of setting position to absolute, means that the footer is not at the browser window, which is one of the requirements. Thanks, Stephen I see what you mean. I think that you will have to either nest the footer in another div or play with the margin/padding settings. Have fun or torture I 've tried a few things on it myself and to no avail. I'm too busy to figure it out now. Jay
Re: [WSG] Overlapping footer
Stevio wrote:
How can I make sure the footer will stop exactly at the black 1px
border of
the #maincontent div which contains the sidebar and the main content?
Stevio,
I looked at your CSS and all you have to do to make this work is to
change the following:
#footer {
position: absolute;
bottom: 0;
padding: 0;
margin: 0;
background-color: #FF;
width: 75%;
clear: both;
border: 0px solid green;
}
to
#footer {
float: left;
bottom: 0;
padding: 0;
margin: 0;
background-color: #FF;
width: 75%;
clear: both;
border: 0px solid green;
}
It seems to work fine. This way, even if you make the #sidebar or
#maincontent huge, the footer stays put.
Jay
--
Jay Gilmore
Developer/Consultant
SmashingRed Web & Marketing
P) 902.529.0651
E) [EMAIL PROTECTED]
