RE: SPAM-LOW: Re: [WSG] How to make DHML cover flash

[Michael Kear]

I object to this notion that it's shoddy  for me to ignore an insignificant
number of users.   And I resent your assertion that it is.   

 

Someone produces a version of some browser and it exists,   and just because
it exists, somewhere in the world,  I'm being shoddy if I don't  buy a
machine to install that OS, learn about how it works,  and then spend
however long it takes to make special tweaks so a minor problem goes away
for the 1 or 2 people that MIGHT possibly experience the problem?    The
people who made debian have produced shoddy work.  Why do you accuse me of
being shoddy?? It's THEM who are shoddy not me.

 

No wonder no one uses it here.

 

Good lord I'm glad you don't run my development process. Let bloody
debian fix their problem!   Why should I have to spend MY time fixing things
because they don't get it right???

 

This page works fine on every browser and OS we have in our stats.We
fixed the problem for those browsers a long time ago and moved on.  If you
cant see that there has to be some limit to the amount of time you can spend
on a project tracking down every last tweak and quirk regardless of whether
there are any affected users or not you are not fit to manage a commercial
development operation.

 

Cheers

Mike Kear

Windsor, NSW, Australia

0422 985 585

Adobe Certified Advanced ColdFusion Developer

AFP Webworks Pty Ltd

http://afpwebworks.com <http://afpwebworks.com/> 

Full Scale ColdFusion hosting from A$15/month

 

 

 

  _  

From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On
Behalf Of Chris Wilson
Sent: Friday, 26 October 2007 4:10 PM
To: wsg@webstandardsgroup.org
Subject: Re: SPAM-LOW: Re: [WSG] How to make DHML cover flash

 


Come off it. Under no circumstance has it ever cost us more to do it right
than to do it poorly; shoddy workmanship always results in higher costs. If
it is costing you too much to do it right, you are doing more than just your
coding wrong. 



On 10/25/07, Michael Kear <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

Thanks for your information, Rogier.   Doesn't change my thinking though.
Firefox with the Firefox logo works how it's supposed to, so there is a
difference between the debian thing and the 'real' Firefox. 

And this difference isn't one we care about.

First of all, if there are any users in that category, there isn't more than
a handful.   Secondly, they don't have to go to this page to use the site. 
This is separate 'help' information.   Thirdly anyone who experiences the
problem we were trying to solve can still navigate the site.

So yes, it would be good to fix it.  But there are far more pressing issues 
for us to work on and if any user finds they are experiencing the problem
this was about, we don't care now, since all the users reflected in our site
stats are not experiencing the problem.

Cost/benefit once again. 

Ideally, we'd like the site to have no issues at all.   But out of 100,000
users, 1 or 2 (at most!) might  not be able to use the drop down menu to
navigate out of the self-running demonstration and have to use the back 
button instead.If debian ever gets to the point in Australia where our
users start using it, the cost/benefit ratio might change, at which time we
might revisit the decision to move on to other issues.

Cheers
Mike Kear
Windsor, NSW, Australia
0422 985 585
Adobe Certified Advanced ColdFusion Developer
AFP Webworks Pty Ltd
http://afpwebworks.com
Full Scale ColdFusion hosting from A$15/month 



-Original Message-
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On
Behalf Of Rogier Schoenmaker
Sent: Friday, 26 October 2007 5:03 AM
To: wsg@webstandardsgroup.org
Subject: SPAM-LOW: Re: [WSG] How to make DHML cover flash

Mike, 

Just for your information Iceweasel IS firefox, just with another name
(build from the firefox source by the debian team). Because of those
stupid American patent laws you can't use a name of software without a 
logo and because the logo is copyrighted, debian doesn't wants it in
their O.S.

fyi: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iceweasel

I understand that you have to prioritize how your site works with 
O.S.' es and browsers, but if you decide to use a plugin like flash
you should go for it completely or don't.
It's out of the question that users can't navigate your site, just
because of some fancy flash. 

But that's my 2 cents.

Rogier.

On 25/10/2007, Michael Kear <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> I think its wonderful how, every time I post something to this list, 
people
> will rush to tell me how we ought to be spending our scarce development
> dollars.
>
> Christian Montoya, why do you assume that we're so dumb we don't know
> anything about our customers?   We have quite a large number of Firefox 
> customers, but if they're using Firefox, the site works fine.   I know
> 

Re: [WSG] How to make DHML cover flash

[Michael Kear]

Ok so Rogier says that a en esoteric non-standard version of Firefox gives a
MINOR problem in navigaton on our help page.It MIGHT possibly affect
perhaps 1 or 2 users out of more than100,000 users.

 

There is no listing of anyone using debian in our OS stats.  Which means
it's only in the "*Other" listing.  The problem these few users might see
doesn't prevent them seeing the site, just makes ONE fo the menu drop downs
a LITTLE difficult to use.  They can still navigate the site.  

 

How much development time do you think that justifies? A day?   2 days?
You think we should go get a machine, install debian,  and run the problem
down?  Or just move on to more important problems?  

 

Until Rogier mentioned debian I had never even heard of it nor had anyone
else I know.  It's a NON-ISSUE

 

IF you want to bother with it,  good luck to you.  But I've already wasted
more time than its worth dealing with these emails. 

 

Cheers

Mike Kear

Windsor, NSW, Australia

Webmaster, Bluegrass Australia

http://bluegrass.org.au

Pacific Bluegrass Network

-

Not a preacher, not an expert but a fan

 - speaking from the heart.

Talking dog on http://Bluegrasscountry.org

-

We are a Bluegrass Unlimited Reporting Program

 

 

 

 

From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On
Behalf Of Chris Wilson
Sent: Friday, 26 October 2007 4:10 PM
To: wsg@webstandardsgroup.org
Subject: Re: SPAM-LOW: Re: [WSG] How to make DHML cover flash

 


Come off it. Under no circumstance has it ever cost us more to do it right
than to do it poorly; shoddy workmanship always results in higher costs. If
it is costing you too much to do it right, you are doing more than just your
coding wrong. 
*



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RE: SPAM-LOW: Re: [WSG] How to make DHML cover flash

[Michael Kear]

Thanks for your information, Rogier.   Doesn't change my thinking though.
Firefox with the Firefox logo works how it's supposed to, so there is a
difference between the debian thing and the 'real' Firefox.

And this difference isn't one we care about. 

First of all, if there are any users in that category, there isn't more than
a handful.   Secondly, they don't have to go to this page to use the site.
This is separate 'help' information.   Thirdly anyone who experiences the
problem we were trying to solve can still navigate the site. 

So yes, it would be good to fix it.  But there are far more pressing issues
for us to work on and if any user finds they are experiencing the problem
this was about, we don't care now, since all the users reflected in our site
stats are not experiencing the problem. 

Cost/benefit once again.

Ideally, we'd like the site to have no issues at all.   But out of 100,000
users, 1 or 2 (at most!) might  not be able to use the drop down menu to
navigate out of the self-running demonstration and have to use the back
button instead.If debian ever gets to the point in Australia where our
users start using it, the cost/benefit ratio might change, at which time we
might revisit the decision to move on to other issues.

Cheers
Mike Kear
Windsor, NSW, Australia
0422 985 585
Adobe Certified Advanced ColdFusion Developer
AFP Webworks Pty Ltd
http://afpwebworks.com
Full Scale ColdFusion hosting from A$15/month



-Original Message-
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On
Behalf Of Rogier Schoenmaker
Sent: Friday, 26 October 2007 5:03 AM
To: wsg@webstandardsgroup.org
Subject: SPAM-LOW: Re: [WSG] How to make DHML cover flash

Mike,

Just for your information Iceweasel IS firefox, just with another name
(build from the firefox source by the debian team). Because of those
stupid American patent laws you can't use a name of software without a
logo and because the logo is copyrighted, debian doesn't wants it in
their O.S.

fyi: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iceweasel

I understand that you have to prioritize how your site works with
O.S.' es and browsers, but if you decide to use a plugin like flash
you should go for it completely or don't.
It's out of the question that users can't navigate your site, just
because of some fancy flash.

But that's my 2 cents.

Rogier.

On 25/10/2007, Michael Kear <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> I think its wonderful how, every time I post something to this list,
people
> will rush to tell me how we ought to be spending our scarce development
> dollars.
>
> Christian Montoya, why do you assume that we're so dumb we don't know
> anything about our customers?   We have quite a large number of Firefox
> customers, but if they're using Firefox, the site works fine.   I know
> because I've tested it in Firefox.   I develop with Firefox.  My client's
> testing regime includes Firefox.   There were  several people on this list
> who tested it in Firefox and didn't report any problems.   The issue was
> raised by Roger who said there was a small problem with "Firefox
(IceWeasel)
> for debian" whatever that is,  not Firefox.You accuse us of making
"poor
> assumptions" when that's indeed what you did in your patronising way.
>
>
> It might be true in big shops that there are unlimited development dollars
> sufficient to allocate teams of people to iron out every last little
issue,
> but in small shops like mine (and they don't come smaller than my
> business!!) there isn't unlimited time available.
>
> Here's a lesson in business for some of you.   There is a limited supply
of
> time and dollars, and most jobs have a deadline.  If you're running a
> development shop for profit, there often comes a time when you have to
> accept there will be issues with your output, and as lon gas it doesn't
> impact unduly on your customers sometimes you have to just let the issues
> remain in order to run the business.
>
> I can't afford to be spending time tracking down every last problem.  And
my
> client wont pay me to either.   We make some compromise decisions along
the
> way.We will not even be testing our site in the browsers mentioned by
> Roger:  Firefox (IceWeasel) for debian, or Epiphany (whatever the hell
they
> are).  I've never heard of those browsers and I surely doubt many of my
> client's customers have either.The site works how we want it to in the
> major environments, and in the others it's still usable, if a little
quirky.
>
>
> That's where it's gonna stop while we move on to more important issues
like
> rebuilding the shopping cart that is  showing signs of stress with the
> volumes we're getting, and redesigni

RE: [WSG] How to make DHML cover flash

[Michael Kear]

I think its wonderful how, every time I post something to this list, people
will rush to tell me how we ought to be spending our scarce development
dollars.  

Christian Montoya, why do you assume that we're so dumb we don't know
anything about our customers?   We have quite a large number of Firefox
customers, but if they're using Firefox, the site works fine.   I know
because I've tested it in Firefox.   I develop with Firefox.  My client's
testing regime includes Firefox.   There were  several people on this list
who tested it in Firefox and didn't report any problems.   The issue was
raised by Roger who said there was a small problem with "Firefox (IceWeasel)
for debian" whatever that is,  not Firefox.You accuse us of making "poor
assumptions" when that's indeed what you did in your patronising way.  


It might be true in big shops that there are unlimited development dollars
sufficient to allocate teams of people to iron out every last little issue,
but in small shops like mine (and they don't come smaller than my
business!!) there isn't unlimited time available.  

Here's a lesson in business for some of you.   There is a limited supply of
time and dollars, and most jobs have a deadline.  If you're running a
development shop for profit, there often comes a time when you have to
accept there will be issues with your output, and as lon gas it doesn't
impact unduly on your customers sometimes you have to just let the issues
remain in order to run the business. 

I can't afford to be spending time tracking down every last problem.  And my
client wont pay me to either.   We make some compromise decisions along the
way.We will not even be testing our site in the browsers mentioned by
Roger:  Firefox (IceWeasel) for debian, or Epiphany (whatever the hell they
are).  I've never heard of those browsers and I surely doubt many of my
client's customers have either.The site works how we want it to in the
major environments, and in the others it's still usable, if a little quirky.


That's where it's gonna stop while we move on to more important issues like
rebuilding the shopping cart that is  showing signs of stress with the
volumes we're getting, and redesigning the database which no longer copes
with the range of products we have to accommodate.

Those of you who think the minimum standard is perfection, good for you.
Well done, I salute you.  I wish I had your set of deadlines and funding to
be able to do the same.   Our standard is slightly lower at 'as good as we
can get it within the time and money allowed.'

Cheers
Mike Kear
Windsor, NSW, Australia
0422 985 585
Adobe Certified Advanced ColdFusion Developer
AFP Webworks Pty Ltd
http://afpwebworks.com
Full Scale ColdFusion hosting from A$15/month



-Original Message-
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On
Behalf Of Christian Montoya
Sent: Wednesday, 24 October 2007 6:12 AM
To: wsg@webstandardsgroup.org
Subject: Re: [WSG] How to make DHML cover flash

> -Original Message-
> From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On
> Behalf Of Michael Kear
> Sent: Monday, October 22, 2007 6:14 PM
> To: wsg@webstandardsgroup.org
> Subject: RE: [WSG] How to make DHML cover flash

> Since we are likely to have perhaps 1 or 2 users only using any of those
> browsers, and by far the vast majority of our users are using WindowsXP
with
> IE6 or IE7 (remember this is not a IT related site  - our customers are
> tshirt retailers and advertising agencies) I've decided the cost/benefit
of
> fixing that isn't worth it.

I work with a 6 non-techie "business types" who are all involved in
advertising/licensing related functions and they all use Firefox by
choice. Have you ever asked your users what they actually use? Do you
have any stats on browsers (Google analytics will tell you this)? If
not, you are just making a poor assumption.

-- 
--
Christian Montoya
christianmontoya.net




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RE: [WSG] How to make DHML cover flash

[Michael Kear]

Thanks Rogier, I appreciate your help. 

Since we are likely to have perhaps 1 or 2 users only using any of those
browsers, and by far the vast majority of our users are using WindowsXP with
IE6 or IE7 (remember this is not a IT related site  - our customers are
tshirt retailers and advertising agencies) I've decided the cost/benefit of
fixing that isn't worth it. 

The few users inconvenienced by the issue can just use the back button or
click on one of the top menu items and get the drop downs from there.  Sorry
for those people, but them's the breaks.   Sometimes you have problems you
know are there, but just simply aren't high enough in the priorities to get
fixed.

I have several other deadlines with this client to meet, and they're far
more important than this one.

But you're right, Rogier, it ought to be fixed for those users, but it's not
going to be unless I have a slow day sometime.

Cheers
Mike Kear
Windsor, NSW, Australia
0422 985 585
Adobe Certified Advanced ColdFusion Developer
AFP Webworks Pty Ltd
http://afpwebworks.com
Full Scale ColdFusion hosting from A$15/month



-Original Message-
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On
Behalf Of Rogier Schoenmaker
Sent: Tuesday, 23 October 2007 4:55 AM
To: wsg@webstandardsgroup.org
Subject: Re: [WSG] How to make DHML cover flash

Hello,

Just so you know, there's no dropdown shown in Firefox (IceWeasel) for
debian, neither for Epiphany and Konquerer doesn't seem to work with
flash.

Hope it's useful.

Regards,

Rogier Schoenmaker.





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RE: [WSG] How to make DHML cover flash

[Michael Kear]

G"day Nate, 

 

Thanks for your comments. 

 

The reason for using wmode was to fix the problem that existed before.   All
I wanted was to make sure the dhtml drop down menu came down on top of the
flash movie not underneath it. 

 

Is that not the best way ?

 

Cheers

Mike Kear

Windsor, NSW, Australia

0422 985 585

Adobe Certified Advanced ColdFusion Developer

AFP Webworks Pty Ltd

http://afpwebworks.com  

Full Scale ColdFusion hosting from A$15/month

 

 

 

  _  

From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On
Behalf Of nate hanna
Sent: Thursday, 18 October 2007 12:59 AM
To: wsg@webstandardsgroup.org
Subject: Re: [WSG] How to make DHML cover flash

 

Michael,

No problems with flash and the menu on my Mac OSX 10.4.10 with FF, and
Safari 419.x (Tiger version (not the new beta)). Ditto on the font being too
small on the drop-down menu (see the attachment); and with the movie taking
too long to download (you may want to either  break the movie up into
smaller movies or use the "bandwidth profile" in flash to help you spread
out the download across multiple frames ( i.e. download a little up front
and then continue the download as needed later so the user doesn't have to
wait as long).

As for the flickering that people are seeing in Safari... here is a helpful
link from Adobe's CSS Advisor: Fixing
  Safari's wmode flicker.

Lastly, what was your reasoning for choosing "wmode='transparent'" typically
you only want to do that if you need to reveal something behind flash within
the HTML. Transparent wmode is NOT supported by Linux and has issues with
some Macintosh browsers ( i.e. Safari). If you don't need to reveal anything
under flash it's better to use "wmode='opaque'". Furthermore, there are
accessibility concerns when using "wmode" (i.e. flash becomes invisible to
screen readers when "wmode" is set; see the following two links: 

*   http://dynamicflash.com/2006/10/flash-accessibility-and-wmode/
*   http://justin.everett-church.com/index.php/2006/02/23/wmode-woes/


Best Regards,
Nate




On 10/17/07, Nick Cowie < [EMAIL PROTECTED] 
> wrote:

Michael

No problems with flash and the menu on my Mac OsX 10.4.9 with FF, Safari or
Opera

Other than issues above, menu typeface is tiny in both FF and Opera,
increasing font size to read them does do damage to the menus with FF, still
usable though. 

Flickering is also visible for me with Safari 2.0.4

ps that flash movie took ages to download. should be split into smaller
pieces that get called as movie progresses.

Nick



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RE: [WSG] How to make DHML cover flash

[Michael Kear]

Thanks for your help Nick, and all the others who helped me with this. 

 

This demo file is a rush job, done at a distance - the flash designer is a
relative of the client and lives in China, and doesn't understand any
English.   Makes it difficult.   So there are a number of design issues on
this site I just accept and try to make the best of it - making it work as
well as I can.   The client himself has a very clear ides of what he wants,
and generally is pretty right about it,  but my role is basically to just
make it work, rather than provide design advice. 

 

There are quite a few things I'd do differently if I had my druthers.  I
inherited quite a lot of code issues too when I took over the site, and bit
by bit I'm rebuilding the site and modernising the code.  But like most
sites, the client isn't going to rebuild the site that's working.  Not as
well as it might perhaps,  but it's working.

 

Thanks for your help everyone.   As always this list has proved
knowledgeable and helpful.   

 

Cheers

Mike Kear

Windsor, NSW, Australia

0422 985 585

Adobe Certified Advanced ColdFusion Developer

AFP Webworks Pty Ltd

http://afpwebworks.com  

Full Scale ColdFusion hosting from A$15/month

 

 

 

  _  

From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On
Behalf Of Nick Cowie
Sent: Wednesday, 17 October 2007 8:06 PM
To: wsg@webstandardsgroup.org
Subject: Re: [WSG] How to make DHML cover flash

 

Michael

No problems with flash and the menu on my Mac OsX 10.4.9 with FF, Safari or
Opera

Other than issues above, menu typeface is tiny in both FF and Opera,
increasing font size to read them does do damage to the menus with FF, still
usable though. 

Flickering is also visible for me with Safari 2.0.4

ps that flash movie took ages to download. should be split into smaller
pieces that get called as movie progresses.

Nick

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RE: [WSG] How to make DHML cover flash

[Michael Kear]

Nick I'm away from my Mac machine for a couple of weeks .. Do you think you
(or someone else with a mac)  could do me a favour and have a look at the
page in question and tell me if the problem is fixed or not on your mac?   

 

It's not all that critical for us, because Macs aren't very big amongst our
customers - a very small proportion  - but if I can set it so it works nice
for them so much the better.  

 

The page is http://newwaves.com.au/nw/mockingupdemo.cfmIt'll only take a
few seconds to determine if the menu drop down under "Stock service" shows
several items or none.

 

Cheers

Mike Kear

Windsor, NSW, Australia

0422 985 585

Adobe Certified Advanced ColdFusion Developer

AFP Webworks Pty Ltd

http://afpwebworks.com <http://afpwebworks.com/> 

Full Scale ColdFusion hosting from A$15/month

 

 

 

 

  _  

From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On
Behalf Of Nick Cowie
Sent: Wednesday, 17 October 2007 1:57 PM
To: wsg@webstandardsgroup.org
Subject: Re: [WSG] How to make DHML cover flash

 

On 16/10/2007, Michael Kear <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

This has fixed the problem for IE6 and Firefox on Windows, so I'm assuming
it's fixed for most of our target browsers.


Probably not.

If your target OSes other than windows, the flash plugin works quite
differently on OsX and *nix. 

I was experimenting with HTML over flash, and while  works great on Windows. The flash plugin could not
get the order right for OsX or *nix, no matter what I tried (source order,
z-index etc). It was purely random 50% of the time the flash would appear
over the HTML and the other 50% of the time the HTML would appear over the
flash file. I was using it on a footer and could just scroll up and down the
page a few times to get different results. 

So you need to check your menu system on one of those OSes. Just rollover
the menu a few times and see what happens.

-- 
Nick Cowie
http://nickcowie.com 



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RE: [WSG] How to make DHML cover flash

[Michael Kear]

Thanks Michael and Kit,  setting the wmode did the trick.   Happily I didn't
even need to go back to the flash programmer (who's in China and we have a
language issue whenever we try to make a change - it's a long story but
suffice to say I'm dealing with the designer in China like it or not!)

Anyway for those who are following along at home, all I had to do was change
the html code where it embeds the flash object in the page to add
'wmode','transparent'  to the AC_FL_RunContent function parameters  and 
 to the  tag parameters.

This has fixed the problem for IE6 and Firefox on Windows, so I'm assuming
it's fixed for most of our target browsers.

Thanks again for your help folks.  Helped out a poor old
developer-turned-designer-by-force once again.

Cheers
Mike Kear
Windsor, NSW, Australia
0422 985 585
Adobe Certified Advanced ColdFusion Developer
AFP Webworks Pty Ltd
http://afpwebworks.com
Full Scale ColdFusion hosting from A$15/month






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[WSG] How to make DHML cover flash

[Michael Kear]

I have a  page where there are some dhtml menus with drop downs across the
top of the page, and a large flash object in the body of one of the pages. 

 

However the drop-down menu items are going underneath the flash object so
they can't be clicked on. I thought I should just put the flash into a
div with a z-index lower than the z-index of the drop down list item, but
that doesn't seem to work.Can anyone please tell me how I ought to deal
with this? 

 

Here's what I have: 

 

In the menus: 



.dropmenudiv {

z-index : 800;

}



 



menu item 1

Menu item 2

 Etc 



 






T Shirts

Polos

Singlets

Sweaters

Shorts

Rash Tops

Clearance



 

And in the flash object: 

 



[flash object code here]



 

 



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[WSG] It's times like this you remember how far you've come

[Michael Kear]

I have the task of writing the database/dynamic stuff behind an e-commerce
site. The design work and static pages are done by a professional design web
dev house in Brisbane, and yesterday I got hold of their work.  My job now
is to merge their stuff with the shopping cart and other components I've
written. 

And it's now I see how far I've come with my web dev techniques. 

This professional design and web dev house has pages that features the
following:

1. every page contains the CSS in text in the  tag, not in a linked
style sheet.
2.  every page uses tables for layout. 
3.  all the tables are nested to multiple levels
4.  many of the cells or  tags have styles inline, or they use the
bgcolor attribute (not consistently either way)
5.  javascript is both typed at the top of the page in the  and also
inline, scattered throughout the page. 
6.  no ULs anywhere.   The navigation is also nested tables.
7. there is no doctype.
8.  the code is scattered all over the page which tells me this professional
dev studio doesn’t look at their code at all, only uses wysiwyg tools.
9. they uploaded the code so EVERYTHING goes in the root level of the site,
no folders at all except they did put the images into an images folder, so
you have to give them half a point for that. 

Now I have to work my own stuff into this site, and it's proving much more
difficult than with my own work.  My own code is organised, it's laid out on
the page, commented and indented,  I use includes to keep the elements of
code separated and easy to find,  and I don’t have any nested tables
anywhere.  In fact I haven’t used tables for anything except tabular data
for 18 months now.

This code just looks old fashioned and amateur.   It's inaccessible, and
difficult to maintain.  Their page weight is about three times what it needs
to be because the javascript and styles are downloaded with each page view,
and the nested tables add enormously to the code weight.

I resent the fact that this professional design house has accepted cash-type
money from my client to design the public side of the web site and produced
such a shoddy job.  Not only that, I have to work inside it, to make all my
work function in this dogs-breakfast of a mess.  

Now I see how far I have come in my development.   My own sites have much
smaller pages for the same content,  they load faster, they're far more
efficient, accessible, and easy to maintain than this pile of spaghetti.

Now I have to decide whether I want to spend some of my own time now redoing
their work, thereby easing the road for myself down the track, or because I
wont get paid for that,  just go along with it and work with it. 

Just venting.   Thanks for being patient with me. 


Cheers
Mike Kear
Windsor, NSW, Australia
Adobe Certified Advanced ColdFusion Developer
AFP Webworks Pty Ltd
http://afpwebworks.com
Full Scale ColdFusion hosting from A$15/month



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RE: [WSG] BR tag causes odd behaviour ??

[Michael Kear]

Thanks, Kenny.  I looked at the page in question (which is the only one I've
validated at this stage - the others will be validated in the near future)
and didn't find any . 

Did you find one?   


Cheers
Mike Kear
Windsor, NSW, Australia
Macromedia Certified Advanced ColdFusion Developer
AFP Webworks Pty Ltd
http://afpwebworks.com
Full Scale ColdFusion hosting from A$15/month



-Original Message-
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
On Behalf Of Kenny Graham
Sent: Monday, 17 October 2005 4:57 PM
To: wsg@webstandardsgroup.org
Subject: Re: [WSG] BR tag causes odd behaviour ??

> Because that is what you tell it to do. At the bottom of
> http://afterlifelink.com.au/css/formstyles.css

Ok, maybe I should have looked at the css ;)
but still, replace those s with s if you're gonna call it
xhtml in the doctype :)


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RE: [WSG] BR tag causes odd behaviour ??

[Michael Kear]

AH!!! Yes .. one of those slap-the-forehead moments.   I put that in for
something to do with a form and forgot it also applied to the rest of the
site even when there were no forms.

DER!!

Ok thanks.   I'll have to put the br clear:left; in the form another way.

Thanks Philippe!


Cheers
Mike Kear
Windsor, NSW, Australia
Macromedia Certified Advanced ColdFusion Developer
AFP Webworks Pty Ltd
http://afpwebworks.com
Full Scale ColdFusion hosting from A$15/month



-Original Message-
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
On Behalf Of Philippe Wittenbergh
Sent: Monday, 17 October 2005 4:39 PM
To: wsg@webstandardsgroup.org
Subject: Re: [WSG] BR tag causes odd behaviour ??


On 17 Oct 2005, at 3:24 pm, Michael Kear wrote:

> Can anyone see why the  is causing the content to drop down 
> below the
> adjacent floated div in the page
> http://afterlifelink.com.au/charges/index.cfm?

Because that is what you tell it to do. At the bottom of
http://afterlifelink.com.au/css/formstyles.css

br{
 clear : left;
}


Philippe
---
Philippe Wittenbergh
<http://emps.l-c-n.com/>



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[WSG] BR tag causes odd behaviour ??

[Michael Kear]

Can anyone see why the  is causing the content to drop down below the
adjacent floated div in the page
http://afterlifelink.com.au/charges/index.cfm?


Cheers
Mike Kear
Windsor, NSW, Australia
Macromedia Certified Advanced ColdFusion Developer
AFP Webworks Pty Ltd
http://afpwebworks.com
Full Scale ColdFusion hosting from A$15/month




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[WSG] OT - need a contract designer

[Michael Kear]

Please reply to this off-line because it’s off topic,
but I’m posting this here because it’s the biggest group of
designers who understand accessibility that I know ..  Sorry if I offend anyone
… 

 

 

ANYWAY … 

 

 

I have been bidding for quite a large project, and have
built in a guess for how much I’ll need to pay for design.  Now the
contact has asked for a ball-park figure on how much to have no development at
all, but instead a redesign of the home page.   I need someone who knows about such
things to have a look at what they want and give me a rough ballpark.   (Rough
ballpark is ok because I’ll be adding lots of provisos to my bid and a
firm price will need to be worked out later).

 

If they totally redevelop the site, I can go with the figure
I’ve guessed at.  If they’re only going to redesign, I have to have
a good idea of how many hours it’s likely to come to, or it could come
back to bite later on. 

 

If you want to be involved in this project,   likely to
happen for real in the next month,  please call me in Sydney on 0422-985-585 cos I need a
guestimate today.

 

 

Cheers

Mike Kear

Windsor, NSW, Australia

Macromedia Certified Advanced ColdFusion Developer

AFP Webworks Pty Ltd

http://afpwebworks.com

Full Scale ColdFusion hosting from A$15/month

 

 

[WSG] Does anyone still design for 640x480?

[Michael Kear]

Yes, I know a good design will scale for any size screen
(resolution if you prefer that term)  but most designers I know pick a
minimum size and work out their designs with this as a normal minimum.  Any
smaller sizes they just make the site work but not fret if things are not
perfectly aligned.

 

For example, I usually design pages that work well in
screens 800x600 or larger but in smaller screens, everything will be there but
if lines have wrapped horribly or tabs and boxes have dropped down to a new
line, I’m not going to worry. 


Is that what you are all doing nowdays?   What sizes are you
designing for?

 

 

Cheers

Mike Kear

Windsor, NSW, Australia

Macromedia Certified Advanced ColdFusion Developer

AFP Webworks Pty Ltd

http://afpwebworks.com

Full Scale ColdFusion hosting from A$15/month

 

 

RE: [WSG] Making CSS Buttons active

[Michael Kear]

Thanks for the suggestion.  That’s
what I thought.   I’m using display:block,  so I must have some other
error or something in there.  I’ll go through the style sheet line by
line again and see if I can see what’s negating the display:block .

 

Thanks for the suggestion. 

 

 

Cheers

Mike Kear

Windsor, NSW, Australia

Macromedia Certified
Advanced ColdFusion Developer

AFP Webworks Pty Ltd

http://afpwebworks.com

Full Scale ColdFusion
hosting from A$15/month

 

 

 









From:
[EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Sent: Friday, 29 July 2005 8:19 PM
To: wsg@webstandardsgroup.org
Subject: Re: [WSG] Making CSS
Buttons active



 



You need to use the property "display:block;". I
suggest you see some of the great examples at http://css.maxdesign.com.au/listamatic/







- Original Message - 





From: Michael Kear 





To: wsg@webstandardsgroup.org






Sent: Friday, July 29,
2005 8:10 PM





Subject: [WSG] Making CSS
Buttons active





 



I’m building a site with a navigation button stack in
the left column, and I’m trying to figure out how to make the whole
button active.  I know I’ve seen it happening somewhere but I
can’t find an example right now.   Can anyone show me how that
is achieved?

 

I’m not sure if I’m making myself clear, but
when I style the  nested list, I get nice buttons being displayed, and
when the cursor hovers over the word in the button, the hover effect works
fine,  but when the cursor is over the button but not over the word, the
hover effect doesn’t work.   If I have a button that’s a
lot wider than the word (for example on the “home” button where the
active area of the button is far smaller than “sign up now” 

 

I know I’ve seen this with java applets, but I sure
don’t want to go down that road again – I have that on my own site
now and it’s a pain.    I felt certain there was a way
using nested lists and CSS to make the entire button area clickable.  Isnt
there?  

 

 

Cheers

Mike Kear

Windsor, NSW, Australia

Macromedia Certified Advanced ColdFusion Developer

AFP Webworks Pty Ltd

http://afpwebworks.com

Full Scale ColdFusion hosting from A$15/month

 

 

 

 

[WSG] Making CSS Buttons active

[Michael Kear]

I’m building a site with a navigation button stack in
the left column, and I’m trying to figure out how to make the whole
button active.  I know I’ve seen it happening somewhere but I can’t
find an example right now.   Can anyone show me how that is achieved?

 

I’m not sure if I’m making myself clear, but
when I style the  nested list, I get nice buttons being displayed, and
when the cursor hovers over the word in the button, the hover effect works
fine,  but when the cursor is over the button but not over the word, the
hover effect doesn’t work.   If I have a button that’s a
lot wider than the word (for example on the “home” button where the
active area of the button is far smaller than “sign up now” 

 

I know I’ve seen this with java applets, but I sure don’t
want to go down that road again – I have that on my own site now and it’s
a pain.    I felt certain there was a way using nested lists and
CSS to make the entire button area clickable.  Isnt there?  

 

 

Cheers

Mike Kear

Windsor, NSW, Australia

Macromedia Certified Advanced ColdFusion Developer

AFP Webworks Pty Ltd

http://afpwebworks.com

Full Scale ColdFusion hosting from A$15/month

 

 

 

 

RE: [WSG] Need a fresh eye - site check please

[Michael Kear]

Thanks Nils.  I've got it fixed now.  

You were close, but not exactly correct.  It turned out it was not the image
itself, but the size of the div containing the image that was the culprit.
I needed to set the left and right margins to -10px to override the 10px
padding of the containing div.   The reason I missed it, was that I had that
set correctly in an earlier version of the style sheet, and forgot to copy
across the #masthead div to the new style sheet.

Thanks a lot for helping - you pointed me at the error I'd been hunting for
for hours.

And thanks for your comments about the link colours.  They were decided by
the client and I've advised her to change them.  Waiting to see what she
says.



Cheers
Mike Kear
Windsor, NSW, Australia
Macromedia Certified Advanced ColdFusion Developer
AFP Webworks Pty Ltd
http://afpwebworks.com
Full Scale ColdFusion hosting from A$15/month





 
-Original Message-
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
On Behalf Of Nils Kr. Falch
Sent: Tuesday, 26 July 2005 11:15 PM
To: wsg@webstandardsgroup.org
Subject: Re: [WSG] Need a fresh eye - cite check please

On 7/26/05, Michael Kear <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> I think I need a fresh eye on this ... I've run out of things to try.  Can
> anyone see why in IE, I have a 10px gap at the right of the container div,
> but in Firefox it looks how it's supposed to.The image of Patty in the
> masthead graphic should touch the right border, as should the horizontal
> rules in the navigation menu and the footer.

It is probably the width of the image in the masthead that is causing
the problem.
The container is 660px wide whereas the image has a set width of 670.
Reducing the image width or increasing the container width seems to
fix the gap problem,

> Any other criticism or comments would be welcome too, if you felt like
> making them.

Just a note on the colour choise. Neither red text on red background
or red text on black background are a wise choise. It is too little
contrast between the colours. I especially had some problem reading
the link text.

I would recomend the Color contrast checker:
http://www.snook.ca/technical/colour_contrast/colour.html
That was posted  in "Some links for light reading" the other day


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[WSG] Need a fresh eye - cite check please

[Michael Kear]

I think I need a fresh eye on this ... I've run out of things to try.  Can
anyone see why in IE, I have a 10px gap at the right of the container div,
but in Firefox it looks how it's supposed to.The image of Patty in the
masthead graphic should touch the right border, as should the horizontal
rules in the navigation menu and the footer.

The site in question is at http://pattyclayton.com/home.cfm
And the relevant style sheets are
http://pattyclayton.com/css/pattyclayton.css
http://pattyclayton.com/css/formstyles.css and 
http://pattyclayton.com/css/menu.css

Any other criticism or comments would be welcome too, if you felt like
making them.


Cheers
Mike Kear
Windsor, NSW, Australia
Macromedia Certified Advanced ColdFusion Developer
AFP Webworks Pty Ltd
http://afpwebworks.com
Full Scale ColdFusion hosting from A$15/month



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[WSG] OT: Site help please

[Michael Kear]

This is off-topic, and I'm sorry for that, but I need some independent
people to have a look at a page and verify I'm seeing what the rest of the
world sees - because my client doesn't .. .   SO any replies off-list please
so we don't end up with a long off-topic debate.

My client swears when he goes to this site, he sees the "a new site is
coming here .. " page that I had there as a holding page while I built his
site.   I've removed that file, but his AOL-Australia is still serving it to
him.When I go to the site, I see a home page, with some text, nav
buttons, pictures of the furniture the client makes etc.  It's obviously not
a "watch this space" page. 

Can anyone please tell me which you see? 

The site is at http://www.grandchesterdesigns.com.au   

Thanks.  Sorry to be going off-topic like this but I don't have anyone else
to ask that's independent. 


Cheers
Mike Kear
Windsor, NSW, Australia
Macromedia Certified Advanced ColdFusion Developer
AFP Webworks Pty Ltd
http://afpwebworks.com
Full Scale ColdFusion hosting from A$15/month




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RE: [WSG] Juicy Studio offline

[Michael Kear]

Since a lot of my competitors' names are being mentioned here,  I feel
justified in plugging my own.  Sorry if I'm going over the bounds.  I try
not to self-promote in these forums.

I'm in the hosting business too.  http://afpwebworks.com   I host on Windows
boxes, with ColdFusion, .ASP, php, perl, even good old html works!
Databases included are MS SQLServer, MySQL, Access, and you can run it all
from a control panel, so you can make changes any time you like without
needing to depend on me to do it. 

You can have as many email accounts as you like, ftp accounts too, and
create your own subdomains on the fly if you like.  I use that for staging
sites or proposals  . e.g. on my site http://afpwebworks.com  I have
http://staging.afpwebworks.com  and http://client1.afpwebworks.com  and
http://client2.afpwebworks.com  You can set them up and take them down
yourself in minutes without having to need any input from me.  And I don't
charge additional for each new site or sub-site - only for the disk space
and bandwidth you use.

You can even register domain names instantly for only $20/year.

Check us out: 

http://afpwebworks.com


Cheers
Mike Kear
Windsor, NSW, Australia
Macromedia Certified Advanced ColdFusion Developer
AFP Webworks Pty Ltd
http://afpwebworks.com
Full Scale ColdFusion hosting from A$15/month


-Original Message-
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On
Behalf Of Douglas Clifton
Sent: Wednesday, 4 May 2005 11:27 AM
To: wsg@webstandardsgroup.org
Subject: [WSG] Juicy Studio offline

For those of you who don't know Gez Lemon of Juicy Studio, he has
been an incredible source of information, articles and tips for the
Web developer community for a long time.

He's currently on vacation and his hosting provider has gone and
given him the shaft while he's away from his home-base.

I'd like to ask anyone that can help, or provide suggestions for a
new host he can move to or any other ideas that you can might
have to do so. Support your fellow developers!

Visit his site for more information about the situation and how to
contact him with suggestions.

http://juicystudio.com/

Thank you!

-- 
Douglas Clifton
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
http://loadaveragezero.com/


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[WSG] Why does my menu float high in IE?

[Michael Kear]

 

Can anyone see why my menu is floating above the content div
in IE6?  It's supposed to be touching the white area below it, as it does
in Firefox and Netscape, but for a reason I can't find, in IE6 it floats above
and resists any attempt I've made to bring it to heel.

 

Obviously it's possible to get it to behave, because others
have made it do so, but all the things I've tried have come to naught. 
I'm clearly missing something simple, but can't figure out what it
is.   I just KNOW its going to be one of those moments when you slap
your forehead and say OH YEAH!! OF COURSE!!!

 

The page in question is at http://staging.atalkingdog.com 
and the style sheet is at http://staging.atalkingdog.com/styles/atalkingdog3.css


 

Cheers,

Mike Kear

Windsor, NSW, Australia

http://afpwebworks.com

AFP Webworks Pty Ltd

ColdFusion, .asp, .asp.net, php, perl hosting starting at
A$15/month.

 

RE: [WSG] How to align form elements

[Michael Kear]

AH, Yes!  Thank you! That did the trick sure 'nuff.  I knew that.  I did!  I
had just momentarily forgotten that’s all. 

(That’s my story and I'm sticking to it.)


Cheers
Mike Kear
Windsor, NSW, Australia
Certified Advanced ColdFusion Developer
AFP Webworks
http://afpwebworks.com
Business Strength ColdFusion,PHP,ASP,ASP.NET hosting from $15/Month



-Original Message-
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On
Behalf Of Jason Turnbull
Sent: Sunday, 2 January 2005 11:01 AM
To: wsg@webstandardsgroup.org
Subject: RE: [WSG] How to align form elements

> Michael Kear wrote:
> in Firefox there is a marked difference in position 
> between the labels and the input box they relate to. 
> See http://atalkingdog.com/form.htm
 
Michael

Adding this style will line up the form

br{
clear:left
}

or add a clearing class to each br element within the form.

Regards
Jason Turnbull


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[WSG] How to align form elements

[Michael Kear]

I’ve got round this problem with a table kludge in the
past, and I’d like to learn how to fix it in CSS … the elements in
my form don't line up – the labels aren’t in line with the input
boxes they relate to.   Can anyone tell me how to fix it? 

 

It’s much worse in Firefox than it is in IE.  In
fact in IE I’d say it’s acceptable – just – but in
Firefox there is a marked difference in position between the labels and the input
box they relate to. 

 

See http://atalkingdog.com/form.htm
   for the example and CSS that relates to it.

 

What do I change to fix this?   Can anyone help?

 

Cheers

Mike Kear

AFP Webworks

Windsor, NSW, Australia

http://afpwebworks.com

.com, .net, .org etc domains start at A$20/year

 

RE: [WSG] an even more amazing css zen garden entry

[Michael Kear]

More proof that good/bad design is nothing whatever to do with
tools/code/software, and everything to do with the designer's mind.

Merry Christmas everyone!


Mike Kear
Windsor, NSW, Australia
Certified Advanced ColdFusion Developer
AFP Webworks
http://afpwebworks.com
Business Strength ColdFusion,PHP,ASP,ASP.NET hosting from $15/Month



-Original Message-
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On
Behalf Of russ - maxdesign
Sent: Saturday, 25 December 2004 1:38 AM
To: Web Standards Group
Subject: [WSG] an even more amazing css zen garden entry

Now there were some people on-list who thought the last Zen Garden entry I
posted lacked a certain "wow" factor. Well, how about this entry which seems
to have it all... Style... Class... Wow... and lots of animation!

http://brucelawson.co.uk/zengarden.htm

:)
Russ

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RE: [WSG] Color Scheme Tools (Was: My Site)

[Michael Kear]

How SOON they forget!   I was very disappointed at how many colour tools
went some of the way and didn't go all the way to doing what I want. 

For example too many didn't allow you to save the results. And the flash
based ones meant you couldn't even cut and paste the HEX results anywhere -
when you got a good colour selection it was paper and pencil time. 

And all these sites with colours against black backgrounds.  Very dramatic,
but that's not how a large number ( maybe most? )  business sites are built.
They're built on white or light backgrounds.   Changes all the colour
dynamics.  

And I wanted to be able to see graduations of colours and how they related
to each other.And the blocks of colour were too small in most of the
tools for me to get a good idea of the real effect of the colours. 

So I built my own.  How soon they have forgotten!!

Have a look at http://afpwebworks.com/ColourSchemer/.   You enter two
colours either as #RRGGBB or as #RGB and the number of steps you want, and
it will give you a blend from one to the other, with large blocks of colour,
with white text and black text and text in each of the colours, showing how
they interact with each other.   Also the URL of the result can be saved or
emailed to people, and will reproduce the colour effect.   For example
here's a nice Christmassy one: 

http://afpwebworks.com/ColourSchemer/index.cfm?colour1=CC3300&colour2=00CC77
&numberofsteps=5&submit=Submit


Cheers
Mike Kear
Windsor, NSW, Australia
AFP Webworks
http://afpwebworks.com
Certified Advanced ColdFusion Developer
.com,.net,.org domains from AUD$20/Year




-Original Message-
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On
Behalf Of Brian Cummiskey
Sent: Friday, 24 December 2004 2:43 AM
To: wsg@webstandardsgroup.org
Subject: Re: [WSG] Color Scheme Tools (Was: My Site)

I like:
http://www.webwhirlers.com/colors/wheel.asp

has a colour wheel and some theory behind colors.
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RE: [WSG] font too small??

[Michael Kear]

I had this same problem a short while ago, and some listers might recall a
spirited exchange that occurred from our friendly single-issue list member.

The solution is to put a percentage value in the body style.   There are
differences of opinion as to what percentage you ought to have, but for me
the nicest result comes from having the body style in your CSS sheet have
the following:

body {font-size: 76%;}

For some reason, 76% works better than 75%.  Don't ask me why.  It was
explained to me at the time but to tell the truth I didn't understand.  Just
take it from me that 76% gives you a better result than 75%.

Hope this helps you.  It did help me a lot.

Cheers
Mike Kear
Windsor, NSW, Australia
AFP Webworks
http://afpwebworks.com
.com,.net,.org domains from AUD$20/Year



-Original Message-
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On
Behalf Of john
Sent: Saturday, 27 November 2004 4:26 AM
To: web standards group
Subject: [WSG] font too small??

For the most part, the debute of my "standards-friendly" redesign has 
been met with great fanfare, but I've been receiving a few emails from 
people saying that the text is "way too small."  This, I do not 
understand, as I've used em to specify font sizes, and they all look 
good to most.  Of course, I'm not striving for MOST...I want ALL.

So, what would be affecting these users who are saying the text is too 
small?  Default computer font size?  What do I tell them, or is there 
anything more I can do on my site?

http://cslewis.drzeus.net

Thanks again.
-- 

~john
_
Dr. Zeus Web Development
http://www.DrZeus.net
"content without clutter"



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[WSG] Sometimes you just cant help people ...

[Michael Kear]

I was talking to a blind friend over the weekend,  and since
he uses Jaws screen reading software, the subject of web sites came up.   I was
observing as how we in the profession were trying to make things easier for
people using other devices than a browser to use the web. 

 

“For example, one of the things we’re
increasingly doing these days is having a ‘skip to content’ link at
the top of the page.  In many cases it’s only visible to screen readers.”

 

Then he floored me.  He said “oh yes!  I’ve seen
those.” (interesting turn of phrase from a guy who’s been blind
since birth) “but what are they for? I’ve never used them because I
don't know what they do.”

 

 

 

The point is,  he didn’t know what the skip-to-content
link was for and therefore he wouldn’t use it, lest he find himself a
long way away from where he wanted to go (the content) and then have trouble getting
back again.   Perhaps we need to be a bit more expansive in the link itself.  
Perhaps instead of “skip to content’ we need to have the link say “skip
to the content of this page” or somesuch.    A blind reader will hear Jaws
say “VISITED LINK.: SKIP TO CONTENT”  and thinking about it, it isn’t
totally obvious what that does. 

 

 

Cheers

Mike Kear

AFP Webworks

Windsor, NSW, Australia

http://afpwebworks.com

.com, .net, .org etc domains start at A$20/year

 

RE: [WSG] Site check please - launched it finally!

[Michael Kear]

> Ok well compare that with this one:
> Median Windows Settings
> 96DPI ("normal fonts")
> IE7.1 set to "Medium"

How does one get IE 7.1?


Oh DER!!!  I'm using IE6.0.2900 - the one that came with WinXP Pro SP2.
It's NETSCAPE that's up to 7.1.  Whoops.

Cheers
Mike Kear
Windsor, NSW, Australia
AFP Webworks
http://afpwebworks.com
.com,.net,.org domains from AUD$20/Year




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RE: [WSG] Another body tag question ...

[Michael Kear]

Thanks Chris,  Neerav.  I need to put on my ever-growing list of things to
learn about 'Learn about CSS shorthand instead of using the stylesweeper in
topstyle to do it for you!'

Thanks.  Makes sense. 

Cheers
Mike Kear
Windsor, NSW, Australia
AFP Webworks
http://afpwebworks.com
.com,.net,.org domains from AUD$20/Year

-Original Message-
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On
Behalf Of Chris Stratford
Sent: Sunday, 14 November 2004 4:33 PM
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: Re: [WSG] Another body tag question ...

Hey Michael,
The 84% is the Font-size.
And the 1.2m is the Line-height.

Michael Kear wrote:

>Another body style question following from Felix's rant ...
>


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[WSG] Another body tag question ...

[Michael Kear]

Another body style question following from Felix's rant ...

I looked at what Yahoo do in their style,  (http://www.yahoo.com) and they
have the following as their body style: 

body{font:84%/1.2em arial,sans-serif;direction:ltr}

What's the point of setting the body font at 84% of 1.2em?  (which is what I
assume is what's happening).  That's 100.8% if my arithmetic is correct, so
is there any point to this instead of setting it to 100%/1.0em? 

What does the 'direction:ltr' part do?


Cheers
Mike Kear
Windsor, NSW, Australia
AFP Webworks
http://afpwebworks.com
.com,.net,.org domains from AUD$20/Year




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[WSG] Question to the others ...

[Michael Kear]

... and to Felix if he's going to be a bit less aggressive 

Felix said that my width (on http://hawkradio.org.au if you're coming in
late to this saga) ought to be set at 100ex.  He says: "Make your overall
width 100ex instead of 780px and the relationship between container width
and text size will hold constant."

Firstly, what kind of measurement is ex?  I have never seen that before.
Secondly, how would a fluid width layout work with a faux column like I've
used?I guess it wouldn't. 

So how can you get the column effect I've designed, with the columns going
the full depth of the page regardless of which column is longer, without
using the fixed-width graphic?  Since the graphic is 780px wide, surely the
container has to be 780px wide too.  No?

Cheers
Mike Kear
Windsor, NSW, Australia
AFP Webworks
http://afpwebworks.com
.com,.net,.org domains from AUD$20/Year





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RE: [WSG] Site check please - launched it finally!

[Michael Kear]

Felix, I think you need to be a little less aggressive and judgemental in
your opinions.  You seem to be trying to make me out as an idiot and
incompetent at setting up my system.  In fact it's deliberately a default
installation. I don't change my browser's defaults for fear of getting into
the very situation you're trying to make out. 

Apparently you think I've tinkered around with my system to the extent that
I don't know what the defaults are any more.  Well the machine I develop my
sites on is kept at a default installation for just this reason.

You posted a picture of how it looks on your browser, but I've never seen it
look like that on a mac, or on IE7, opera, Firefox (two versions) or
Netscape.  

Here's what you posted: 
Median windoze settings:
96 DPI ("small fonts")
IE6 set to "medium"
1024x768
http://members.ij.net/mrmazda/tmp/hawkradioW98-IE1.png


Ok well compare that with this one: 
Median Windows Settings
96DPI ("normal fonts")
IE7.1 set to "Medium"
1024x768
http://hawkradio.org.au/images/hawkradio1024x768.png

You'll see that the text in the "what's on today" table on the right is
smaller than body text, which is intended. (On yours the table text is much
larger than body text)   Body text is readable.  The H2 headings on the home
page are aligned as they ought to be, just to the right of the chevron
graphic.

I contend that since my IE7 looks the same as all the other browsers (with
the exception of the opera menu issue described by someone else earlier)
that it's in fact your ancient Win98/IE6 that's the problem I need to find a
hack for, not my competence in setting up my machine.  ( yes, I DO need to
find a solution because there will be site users with that configuration)


I said I needed to put the help page there because the deputy chairman of
the station was having problems reading the site and you made a stupid
comment that maybe his eyes were much older than mine.  You don't know
anything about the situation here so don't make idiotic assumptions.  It
doesn't matter if he is older than me or not (actually he's 15 years
younger) and it makes no difference anyway.   And I find your assertion that
"You, as countless others, create problems because you DON'T configure your
own to suit your own taste BEFORE beginning design work, instead assuming as
do too many others, that most do nothing as do you yourself, and that those
who do simply don't matter to you.."  to be quite offensive.  I do care
about the site's users.  The site is there for them and for the radio
station not for me.  

Felix I'm perfectly ready to acknowledge I'm a learner.  I've been a learner
for 54 years.  I've only built 10 CSS sites, so I have a lot to learn.  But
if you want anyone to pay attention to your opinions you need to learn to
show a bit of respect and use less intemperate language.

Back off buster.  If you have some thing to say I'm interested to know what
it is but if you are just going to be offensive you don't count in my view.


Cheers
Mike Kear
Windsor, NSW, Australia
AFP Webworks
http://afpwebworks.com
.com,.net,.org domains from AUD$20/Year





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RE: [WSG] Site check please - launched it finally!

[Michael Kear]

-Original Message-
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On
Behalf Of Felix Miata
Sent: Sunday, 14 November 2004 6:36 AM

> 5) I'd suggest setting your "body" font size to 76% or 0.7em. It looks
> just a little better at that size.

It already is .7em, which is only half default size (49% of the total
pixels per character box of the default size).>


Thanks for your thoughts Felix.   The size is already at 0.7em because I
adopted the excellent suggestion of Hugh Todd and changed it. 





<<< "Too small to read?" (which
at 1.5em X 13px is ~2.5px smaller than my Gecko default). If one gets to
the point of seeing it and clicking on it, he is delivered a page that
also has everything except headings and  ("What's on the air today:"
data is much larger in IE than is  on the rest of the page) set to
13px (which is who knows how big compared to the user's default, which
in my case translates to a minescule 35%), on this a page ostensibly
intended to help the user overcome too small page text. How is a user
supposed to read this? What a paradox - help that needs help!

On this help page at the very least the help text should be big enough
to read - e.g. 1.0em. But then that begs the question - if the text was
big enough in the first place, the visitor wouldn't need the page in the
first place, would he?>>




I put the "too small to read?" page in there because the deputy chairman of
the station who is overseeing the project couldn't read the site.   In my
browser, it all looks fine.  In his it doesn't.  It's a conundrum.  If he
set up his browser properly, the site would look ok. 

You don't think the 'help' page is much use obviously. Well my problem is, I
can't see the issue I'm trying to solve.  I don't know how to set up my
browser wrongly so I get the same view that our deputy chairman does.   You
do apparently.  Since the help page looks wrong to you, and I can't see the
problem that I'm trying to solve, perhaps rather than merely criticising you
could help me out here by suggesting what would be a better setting.  I
figured that for anyone who saw the text on the site as being too small, the
only way I could give them a page that they could definitely see would be
one with text fixed at the normal pixel size used in the old-fashioned sites
- namely with body text fixed at 11-15 pixels (I chose 13px).  

To be honest I don't know how to deal with this issue and perhaps others
might like to suggest a way.  If they can't see the site because it's too
small, and I want to keep the relative font sizing,  how to I deliver a help
page that they can see?  It's silly to give them a page with fonts in
relative sizes (1.0em) because that's the problem they're trying to solve!
For the others that size is huge.  


<<<>>>

The chevrons obscuring text?  Not in any browser I use at any resolution
I've been able to test at.  Perhaps you can give me some more details of
your resolution settings, os etc.



<<<


I'd be most grateful if you DID look into the why, because on my browsers,
at all resolutions I can test at down to 800x600  (below that I'm not
interested in) it scales nicely, and is right aligned, and comes across to
about 80% of the width of the page.  The remaining space is to be used by
two more major divisions of the site once they're ready.   I'm not sure what
higher resolution you are using but I work at 1280x1024 and I don't know if
many of our users are going to be going higher than that.  If there are
problems with layout higher at resolutions higher than 1280x1024 I guess
we'll have to live with it.  2 or 3 users aren't going to be a problem.
What higher resolution are you talking about, Felix?


Cheers
Mike Kear
Windsor, NSW, Australia
AFP Webworks
http://afpwebworks.com
.com,.net,.org domains from AUD$20/Year




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RE: [WSG] Site check please - launched it finally!

[Michael Kear]

G'day Chris

Thanks for pointing that menu thing out. Somewhere along the line I've
changed a setting somewhere because that other 'About' is supposed to say
'About the web site'.  

And yes, it's me.  My show is a specialty bluegrass music show from 2am -
dawn every Friday to about 3000 people around Sydney and replayed 10 times a
week on the internet station http://bluegrasscountry.org to about 85,000
people a week.  (more than 2SM in Sydney at peak time!)  Not bad for
volunteer run show in a very niche music huh.   

That sound you hear is my horn tooting as I blow it.  No one else is going
to!


Cheers
Mike Kear

p.s. I'm really sorry to the half dozen or so people who volunteered to
design the site.  You weren't selected, not because you weren't good enough,
but because I couldn't get my ducks in a row in time to do it all.   My
apologies to you all, and thanks for volunteering anyway.



-Original Message-
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On
Behalf Of Chris Stratford
Sent: Saturday, 13 November 2004 5:30 PM
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: Re: [WSG] Site check please - launched it finally!

Hey Michael,
Looks great!

One thing I would say is that the menu structure may be confusing - 
maybe not.
But whenever the menu drops down - eg: for ABOUT.
I didnt think there would or should be differnt links for the two menu 
items called about...

it looks like this:

ABOUT
ABOUT
GEEKY STUFF
STATION NEWS

The top level about, and the 2nd level About are both different links...
Maybe that just confused me.

also.
is this you?

MUSIC FROM FOGGY HOLLOW <http://hawkradio.org.au/bluegrass/>
with
Mike Kear
Bluegrass, Newgrass & Acoustic Country

??

Michael Kear wrote:

> You might recall that some time ago I offered the opportunity to 
> starting-designers to have a go at designing a radio station web site. 
> I said there was no money involved but we'd try to pay with 
> advertising and promotion etc for the designer. Well here's progress 
> on what's happened.
>
> Through my own lack of organisation I was unable to get our end sorted 
> out to brief a designer, so I had to design it all myself. I'm still 
> not 100% happy with the way it looks, and I'd still welcome input from 
> designers, on the same basis - perhaps replace the existing style 
> sheets with a better design from an aesthetic standpoint if anyone 
> wants to do it, but the site is in a whole 'nother league than the one 
> that preceeded it and which I inherited two years ago.
>
> The url is http://hawkradio.org.au <http://hawkradio.org.au/> and it's 
> a fully dynamic site. The server is in the Midwest of the USA, but the 
> site knows the time of day in Windsor, and can show the current 
> programme details and what's on today. We're going to have a lot more 
> information about the shows. When I have finished removing the last 
> few bugs from the content management system, I'm going to allow some 
> shows to have their own sub-site so they can post playlists, 
> information, recipes, garden notes, sports scores or whatever is 
> appropriate to their shows, and profiles of the presenters. They'll 
> all be maintained by the djs themselves without needing input from me, 
> although some will require approval from the programme management 
> before their work goes live.
>
> I'm adding a news feed from the Sydney Morning Herald in a few days, 
> and a calendar of community events which will be input by the local 
> Rotary, Lions, Chamber of commerce and other community groups. This 
> will be used for input to the "what's on around the Hawkesbury" page 
> as well as getting more listener involvement.
>
> Also to come is a photo gallery - pictures of the station out and 
> about around the Hawkesbury, and our happy smiling faces of listeners. 
> Believe it or not there are lots and LOTS of them, and when we go to 
> local events nearly every weekend, we have hundreds of people coming 
> over and telling us they listen and like us better than the big city 
> commercial stations. They say we play more varied material and they 
> get bored with the same 40 songs day after day on the commercial stations.
>
> We're working up packages for advertising too. We're restricted by our 
> licence to carrying a maximum of 4 minutes of ads per hour, so we can 
> add value to the ad packages by putting banners, links, spots and 
> other messages on our web site which isn't restricted at all.
>
> The site's built to XHTML1.0 transitional, mostly because the WYSIWYG 
> editor doesn't produce valid XHTML strict, and the programme guide 
> page is a long way from valid. But it's a tricky bit of co

[WSG] Site check please - launched it finally!

[Michael Kear]

You might recall that some time ago I offered the
opportunity to starting-designers to have a go at designing a radio station web
site.  I said there was no money involved but we’d try to pay with
advertising and promotion etc for the designer.    Well here’s
progress on what’s happened.

 

Through my own lack of organisation I was unable to get our
end sorted out to brief a designer, so I had to design it all myself.   I’m
still not 100% happy with the way it looks, and I’d still welcome input
from designers, on the same basis – perhaps replace the existing style
sheets with a better design from an aesthetic standpoint if anyone wants to do
it, but the site is in a whole ‘nother league than the one that preceeded
it and which I inherited two years ago.

 

The url is http://hawkradio.org.au
  and it’s a fully dynamic site.  The server is in the Midwest
of the USA, but the site knows the time of day in Windsor, and can show the
current programme details and what’s on today.    We’re
going to have a lot more information about the shows.  When I have
finished removing the last few bugs from the content management system, I’m
going to allow some shows to have their own sub-site so they can post
playlists, information, recipes, garden notes,  sports scores or whatever
is appropriate to their shows, and profiles of the presenters.  They’ll
all be maintained by the djs themselves without needing input from me, although
some will require approval from the programme management before their work goes
live.

 

I’m adding a news feed from the Sydney Morning Herald in
a few days, and a calendar of community events which will be input by the local
Rotary, Lions, Chamber of commerce and other community groups.  This will
be used for input to the “what’s on around the Hawkesbury”
page as well as getting more listener involvement.

 

Also to come is a photo gallery – pictures of the station
out and about around the Hawkesbury, and our happy smiling faces of
listeners.  Believe it or not there are lots and LOTS of them, and when we
go to local events nearly every weekend, we have hundreds of people coming over
and telling us they listen and like us better than the big city commercial
stations.  They say we play more varied material and they get bored with
the same 40 songs day after day on the commercial stations.

 

We’re working up packages for advertising too. 
We’re restricted by our licence to carrying a maximum of 4 minutes of ads
per hour, so we can add value to the ad packages by putting banners, links,
spots and other messages on our web site which isn’t restricted at all. 

 

The site’s built to XHTML1.0 transitional, 
mostly because the WYSIWYG editor doesn’t produce valid XHTML strict, and
the programme guide page is a long way from valid.  But it’s a
tricky bit of code and I’m too busy right now to rebuild it.  
But it’s on the list.

 

I’d love to know what you all think.   
I think it’s not too bad for a colour-challenged code monkey

 

Cheers

Mike Kear

AFP Webworks

Windsor, NSW, Australia

http://afpwebworks.com

.com, .net, .org etc domains start at A$20/year

 

[WSG] Colour Scheme aids

[Michael Kear]

Not sure if this is off-topic or not.  If it is, I
apologise now.  But I hope it isn’t off-topic, so I’ll
continue … .

 

Does anyone have a favourite colour scheme
tool?    What I’m looking for is a tool for
design-challenged klutzes like me (well ok it’s actually FOR me.  I
admit it!) where I can take a couple of given colours such as in a logo, and
create a suggested colour scheme for a site?  With alternative contrasting
or complementary colours.

 

I can spend as long trying to work out colours as I can on the
whole rest of the designing process.  I have read plenty of tutorials on
the subject, so that’s not what I’m looking for.  The trouble
is, every tutorial I read makes it more obvious that I’m a ditz when it
comes to colour and design. (Something my wife has been telling me for 30
years).  I get more and more confused as I read more.  What I’d
like to find is something I saw once years ago and can’t find any more …
I’d like to enter say two colours that I get from a logo, and click to
get a few colour scheme suggestions that would work together with those
colours.   From there I could refine the lighter and darker colours I
need using my own blender tool on my web site.  

 

(If you haven’t seen that, I’m really proud of
it.  It’s the first design tool I’ve ever made.  It’s
at http://afpwebworks.com/ColourSchemer/index.cfm
 - you put in the starting colour, and the finishing colour, and the
number of steps you want up to 20 and it’ll give you the values of the 20
steps from one colour to the other, with blocks and text in those colours. )

 

Anyway, can anyone help me out with a colour scheme design
tool please?

 

 

Cheers

Mike Kear

AFP Webworks

Windsor, NSW, Australia

http://afpwebworks.com

.com, .net, .org etc domains start at A$20/year

 

RE: [WSG] Select form element doesnt validate

[Michael Kear]

True, Patrick,  it's not a teaching tool.  But you do need to be able to
find out what is correct if it says it's wrong.

The link in the big red bar doesn't link to a syntax reference at all, but a
general document about XHTML and changes from html etc.  I was looking for
something to tell me specifically what is the valid syntax for a drop down
select box, and I couldn't find one.  Still can't.

Can anyone tell me where to find the specific syntax for a select dropdown?
Or any other tag?You can't find it from the validator page, and I'd have
thought you ought to be able to.

As it is, it's a bit like when your dad whacked you as a kid for doing
something wrong.  You wailed "what was that for?" and he says "you did
something wrong - something to do with your clothes." and he wont tell you
that you should have picked your clothes up off the bathroom floor after
your shower.  In my book that's poor parenting, and I think it would be a
very simple task for W3C to add a link to the correct syntax somewhere in
that validator tool.

Now another possibility is that I couldn't see a link to the correct syntax
that was right there in front of my face.   Well after searching the
validator results page for 30 minutes I couldn't see it, and if there was
such a link, it's not very well designed.   It ought to be obvious.

So ... where DO I find a reference document showing the correct syntax for
XHTML tags?

Cheers
Mike Kear
Windsor, NSW, Australia
AFP Webworks
http://afpwebworks.com
.com,.net,.org domains from AUD$20/Year



-Original Message-
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On
Behalf Of Patrick H. Lauke
Sent: Tuesday, 26 October 2004 11:21 AM
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: Re: [WSG] Select form element doesnt validate

Michael Kear wrote:
> I figure if a validator is going to say "that's wrong" they
> ought to provide a link so you can find out what's right. 
> 
> Don't you think?

There are no less than 2 links to the exact specification of the doctype 
your document purports to use (one at the top, in the form, just next to 
the dropdown where you can force a different doctype, and one in the big 
brown/red bar that tells you when something is not valid).

Also, the actual error messages are quite verbose if you read them 
properly. For example, in the case of "there is no attribute" type 
errors, you have, among other things: " How to fix: check the spelling 
and case of the element and attribute, (Remember XHTML is all 
lower-case) and/or check that they are both allowed in the chosen 
document type, and/or use CSS instead of this attribute." (and yes, in 
this case it was the lower-case issue that was to blame).

Beyond that, it's a validating tool, not a teaching tool...

Patrick H. Lauke


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RE: [WSG] Select form element doesnt validate

[Michael Kear]

Ok, I figured out by trial and error that SELECTED="selected" is wrong, but
selected="selected" is correct, but I still don't see a link anywhere to the
correct syntax.  I figure if a validator is going to say "that's wrong" they
ought to provide a link so you can find out what's right. 

Don't you think?

Cheers
Mike Kear
Windsor, NSW, Australia
AFP Webworks
http://afpwebworks.com
.com,.net,.org domains from AUD$20/Year


-Original Message-
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On
Behalf Of Michael Kear
Sent: Tuesday, 26 October 2004 9:47 AM
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: [WSG] Select form element doesnt validate

I'm trying to validate a page,  and I'm getting this error.   

Line 183, column 28: the name and VI delimiter can be omitted from an
attribute specification only if SHORTTAG YES is specified

And also ..

Line 184, column 29: there is no attribute "SELECTED"

I have two problems with this .  

I tried to find what the syntax of this should be,   and couldn't find a
link anywhere to the actual syntax definition.  I don't know what a VI
Delimiter is, and looked for a definition.  I'd have thought that W3C would
have it somewhere linked to the validator, but not where I can see. 

And also I was sure that SELECTED="selected" was correct, but apparently
not.   Again I looked for the dinkum definition  but couldn't find it.
Anyone know where it is?

Here's the code for the offending form element involved:

Referred By:
Search Engine
Heard about the site on the
radio
Web Ring
E-Mail
Friend
Just Surfed In




Cheers
Mike Kear
AFP Webworks
Windsor, NSW, Australia
http://afpwebworks.com
.com, .net, .org etc domains start at A$20/year



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[WSG] Select form element doesnt validate

[Michael Kear]

I'm trying to validate a page,  and I'm getting this error.   

Line 183, column 28: the name and VI delimiter can be omitted from an
attribute specification only if SHORTTAG YES is specified

And also ..

Line 184, column 29: there is no attribute "SELECTED"

I have two problems with this .  

I tried to find what the syntax of this should be,   and couldn't find a
link anywhere to the actual syntax definition.  I don't know what a VI
Delimiter is, and looked for a definition.  I'd have thought that W3C would
have it somewhere linked to the validator, but not where I can see. 

And also I was sure that SELECTED="selected" was correct, but apparently
not.   Again I looked for the dinkum definition  but couldn't find it.
Anyone know where it is?

Here's the code for the offending form element involved:

Referred By:
Search Engine
Heard about the site on the
radio
Web Ring
E-Mail
Friend
Just Surfed In




Cheers
Mike Kear
AFP Webworks
Windsor, NSW, Australia
http://afpwebworks.com
.com, .net, .org etc domains start at A$20/year



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RE: [WSG] "top of page" link class not taking effect

[Michael Kear]

You do remember that any link that refers to an anchor on the same page is
by definition a visited link don't you.  You can't just set
text-decoration:none; on the link, you have to make sure it's set on the
visited link too.

Could that be the cause? Do you have some styling related to visited links
that's being inherited here?

Cheers
Mike Kear
Windsor, NSW, Australia
AFP Webworks
http://afpwebworks.com
.com,.net,.org domains from AUD$20/Year



-Original Message-
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: RE: [WSG] "top of page" link class not taking effect

G'day

> it's the appearance of the link that's the problem.



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RE: [WSG] "top of page" link class not taking effect

[Michael Kear]

Richard, we can't see it because you have put the wrong link in.
http://127.0.0.1 is the address of your own computer.  If I click on it,
it's the address of MY computer. 

We can't look at it unless you put it in a world-accessible place.

Cheers
Mike Kear
Windsor, NSW, Australia
AFP Webworks
http://afpwebworks.com
.com,.net,.org domains from AUD$20/Year


-Original Message-
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On
Behalf Of Richard Lake
Sent: Saturday, 9 October 2004 12:48 AM

[snip]

Everything validates (apart from an IE expression that I've removed but made
no difference) yet the "topl" style is ignored and the enclosing div's style
is retained. It can be viewed at http://127.0.0.1/pricklypair/index.php
Can anybody help please.
Thanks
Richard



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RE: [WSG] Is XHTML harmful?

[Michael Kear]

-Original Message-
Shane Helm - he say: 

<<>>>


Quite so.   I'm ashamed to say I built several web sites without validating
anything.  I worked on the basis that if it looked ok in IE and perhaps
Netscape, and didn't look too bad in the mac we had at the next desk, that
was ok.  Anyone else who has something different was on their own.  Lots of
luck, pal.

Since I've learned more about web standards and accessibility I've had
occasion to rebuild one of those sites, and I built it to XHML1.0Strict.
I'm not sure if using XHTML was better, or just because I validated the
code, but the new version of the site is faster, smaller, better, laid out
better, the code all works.  It's easier to maintain. Far faster to find the
place in a page that needs work than it did before.  

Perhaps it's got nothing to do with XHTML per se, but because I coded to a
much more stringent standard, I did a better job of it.  It was frustrating
at first,  seeing all those errors coming up, and the nasty ole validator
being picky and splitting hairs over a non-supported attribute here or a
forgotten / there but the end result is a much better job, and now I am much
more disciplined in the code I write.

The tighter discipline on my own coding habits means I get more pages right
first time now than I did before.  Benefit: faster results of higher quality
than before. 

Maybe XHTML has nothing to do with it, maybe it does.  But the overall
effect is a big improvement all around for me.  I reckon validating makes
good sense from many points of view.

Cheers
Mike Kear
Windsor, NSW, Australia
AFP Webworks
http://afpwebworks.com
.com,.net,.org domains from AUD$20/Year




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RE: [WSG] Re: Free Editors

[Michael Kear]

Amar, you have to keep accessibility in perspective.   While we think a lot
about accessibility, to the majority of site owners,  the word
'accessibility' means 'catering to blind and disabled users'.   This is
obviously a gross simplification but that's how a lot of site owners think
of it. 

Now if you're the Marketing Director of a large company, and have lots of
choices to make, you look at the number of blind and disabled users and
decide how much of your effort can go towards catering to them.  In the
majority of cases, they'll decide that when pages come up for redesign
they'll build in accessibility and otherwise, its not worth spending money
on.  It's the same logic that we developers use when deciding if we're going
to put effort into making our pages work well in every single browser or
whether we're going to select a group of them and the rest take their
chances.

I know that there is a lot more to standards and accessibility than caring
for blind and disabled users, but that's what the word 'accessibility' means
to most site owners, like it or not.

To Macromedia, their primary concern is making a profit, and building their
market base in the development and design industries.  Looking after
accessibility issues is on the list, but a long way down from number one.


Cheers
Mike Kear
Windsor, NSW, Australia
AFP Webworks
http://afpwebworks.com
.com,.net,.org domains from AUD$20/Year




-Original Message-
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On
Behalf Of Amit Karmakar
Sent: Saturday, 18 September 2004 3:06 PM
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: Re: [WSG] Re: Free Editors

I was at a Seminar conducted late last year when Bob Regan was down.
http://www.markme.com/accessibility/ That page is the same today as it
was then.  I did hear the same rant too but sorry to say (while I have
nothing against Macromdeia) there focus is not so much accessibility
or comparitively less to - lets say, promote Breeze, Contribute, Flex
yada yada.. I am not saying they are bad but I have heard too many
promises being made. Although, its good to see that Flash has advanced
in that content.

And again this is not to berate Macromedia. I am sure they are doing a
lot of work in related fields. But my take is if they were really that
much more into accessibility and really concerned they may have been a
smidgen more thoughtful about the top level pages at least.


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RE: [WSG] Re: Free Editors

[Michael Kear]

It's not entirely Off topic.  At the MXDU conference last year, Sean
Cornfield who is the Macromedia webmaster, said that they're gradually
working towards standards compliance and accessibility.  He said they are
taking it seriously and whenever they work on a part of the site, they bring
it up to more modern standards.  But there are more than 40,000 pages on the
site, so it's no trivial task.  A lot of the pages are rarely visited
archived pages, so it's a big question whether it's worth the effort to
update some of them.

Macromedia are concerned with accessibility issues, and have listened to
people who tell them, for example, that flash isn't accessible.   In the new
FlashMX2004Pro v7.2 just released (that's the development tool), there are
improvements specifically to make flash elements accessible.  

Cheers
Mike Kear
Windsor, NSW, Australia
AFP Webworks
http://afpwebworks.com
.com,.net,.org domains from AUD$20/Year



-Original Message-
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On
Behalf Of Amit Karmakar
Sent: Saturday, 18 September 2004 2:16 PM
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: Re: [WSG] Re: Free Editors

And speaking of Macromedia itself how accessible is
http://macromedia.com/bin/accessibility.cgi

Again no  no 

Sorry this is slightly OT

[snip]



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RE: [WSG] WYSIWYG Editors

[Michael Kear]

You're right about that Justin.  Remove some of the features!  

In fact I spent probably three quarters of my development time on the one I
use now (and have to insist users only use IE - I hate that!) on disabling
stuff.  I want to have my users able to produce nice looking content, but
within the parameters of the site design and standards.  I don't want them
able to use font tags, I don't want them PUTTING EVERYTHING IN CAPS COS ITS
BETTER THAT WAY!! (no it isn't!) or changing colours every word, or putting
text in gigantic size because they think it'll stand out against the other
content.   I want them to use only the features I want them to. 

I found a guy who makes one for ColdFusion only that has a very restricted
list of features, and it looks very promising however he has a lot more work
to do on making it function properly.  But his approach is good.  It's small
in file size, loads fast,  and doesn't have dozens of graphics that have to
download like FCKEditor does.   When he polishes it up and makes it
cross-browser compatible it's going to do me fine.


Cheers
Mike Kear
Windsor, NSW, Australia
AFP Webworks
http://afpwebworks.com
.com,.net,.org domains from AUD$20/Year


-Original Message-
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On
Behalf Of Justin French
Sent: Friday, 17 September 2004 2:12 PM
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: Re: [WSG] WYSIWYG Editors

[snip]

If that's such a monumental task (it probably is), they should start by 
removing features, rather than removing support for certain browsers.

Rant over :)

---
Justin French
http://indent.com.au


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RE: [WSG] WYSIWYG Editors

[Michael Kear]

G'day Vlad, 

Thanks for posting about your XStandard editor. I've been looking at your
product off-and-on for a while, and never got round to getting a hold of it
and using it seriously. 

One thing worries me though ... with WIndowsXP SP2 supressing all active-X
controls except Microsoft's, how do you get around this? 

I was developing a flash app the other day, and every time I went to preview
it on my own PC, IE blocked it and I had to click 3 places to tell IE that I
wanted to allow my own app to run on my own PC. 

Cheers
Mike Kear
Windsor, NSW, Australia
AFP Webworks
http://afpwebworks.com
.com,.net,.org domains from AUD$20/Year



-Original Message-
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On
Behalf Of Vlad Alexander (XStandard)
Sent: Thursday, 16 September 2004 10:52 PM
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: Re: [WSG] WYSIWYG Editors

Hi Olajide,

Most of the in-browser editors mentioned are wrappers around the MSHTML
control in IE which is just a derivative of a 5 year old version of
FrontPage. Microsoft is no longer supporting or enhancing it. Any editors
that have color-pickers or font-selectors do not follow best-practices in
Web standards.

Some think that if you take HTML 4 generated by WYSIWYG editors, shape,
twist, squeeze and pull it, you get XHTML. If you want accessible and
semantically meaningful XHTML, then generated XHTML from the get go. Check
out this article:
http://xstandard.com/wysiwyg/

I am one of the developers of XStandard - a standards-compliant XHTML
(Strict / 1.1) WYSIWYG editor. We offer a free version so that Web standards
are in reach of every developer. A Mozilla/Firefox version will be available
next month.

Here is the link:
http://xstandard.com

Regards,
-Vlad Alexander
XStandard Development Team
http://xstandard.com



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RE: [WSG] WYSIWYG Editors

[Michael Kear]

Sorry Mark, but I don't think you're correct.  Until very recently, they
only worked on IE.  Run the page on any other browser and you either get an
error, or a plain textarea form control.

And until the day before yesterday, there wasn't any I knew of that claimed
to have XHTML support.   Except one that claimed to have XHML support and
produced all upper case tags, and allowed  to remain in the output.

And yes, Dreamweaver handles XHTML excellently.  You can load an old page
into it,  select "Convert to XHTML" on the file menu and bingo!  Valid
XHML1.0 Transitional.  A little tweaking and you have XHTML1.0Strict.


Cheers
Mike Kear
Windsor, NSW, Australia
AFP Webworks
http://afpwebworks.com
.com,.net,.org domains from AUD$20/Year



-Original Message-
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On
Behalf Of Mark Harwood
Sent: Thursday, 16 September 2004 9:33 PM
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: Re: [WSG] WYSIWYG Editors


Olajide,

You question is a bit vage, any WYSIWYG editor will work on all 
browsers depending on the markup you input!

I think your asking "which offers the best XHTML & CSS" Support?

I wouldnt know, as i thrown on using them for XHTML & CSS coding,
But Dreamweaver MX 2004 is supose to handly XHTML & CSS very well
but its still down to how well the user implements the code as too
how X-browser compatible the output will be

Mark Harwood


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RE: [WSG] WYSIWYG Editors

[Michael Kear]

There are some coming through now that work in Firefox too.  It's been a
problem because they use a proprietary control in IE.

Here are some you can look at: 
TinyMCE
http://tinymce.moxiecode.com/examples/example_simple.htm
http://tinymce.moxiecode.com/examples/example_advanced.htm

Dev Edit has HTML and XHTML output, and comes in flavours for .ASP, .PHP,
.NET and ColdFusion. 
www.devedit.com

There's FCKEdit, which comes in .ASP and ColdFusion (not sure about the
others)
FCKEditor Beta 2
http://www.fckeditor.net/Demo/

And of course the old tried-and-true SoEditor, now in XHTML  

SoEditor 3 alpha demos
http://www.siteobjects.com/siteobjects/soeditor3/pro/demos/ 

Actually not much to see here at the moment. Not many of the buttons are
functional. Notable is the full screen mode which unlike some other editors
stretches the layer to full screen --> _VERY_ nice!


Now all of those are free, of course, but may work out to be worth the
investment anyway.


Cheers
Mike Kear
Windsor, NSW, Australia
AFP Webworks
http://afpwebworks.com
.com,.net,.org domains from AUD$20/Year

-Original Message-
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On
Behalf Of Olajide Olaolorun
Sent: Thursday, 16 September 2004 9:11 PM
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: [WSG] WYSIWYG Editors

Hi, I was wondering if any one knows a free WYSIWYG Editor that works
with both IE and Firefox or Mozilla... or any other browser.

The ones I have been seeing only work with IE

Please help...

-- 
Personal &Hobby:
www.olajideolaolorun.com
www.empirex.net


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[WSG] I found a compliant Radio station site!

[Michael Kear]

I’ve been looking, on and off, for a
standards-compliant radio station site for ages, and I’ve finally found
one.   NZ’s government-owned Radio New Zealand has a compliant site,
coded in XHTML1.0 strict.  It’s even got a page about its compliance and
how its accessibility features work.

 

The site LOOKs really REALLY  boring, which I think they
could have improved a lot, but the structure and navigation etc proves that you
can indeed have an informative media site that doesn’t have all the
garbage that’s on most media sites.

 

It’s at http://www.radionz.co.nz 
and the accessibility statement is at http://www.radionz.co.nz/index.php?nav=1§ion=access


 

 

Cheers

Mike Kear

AFP Webworks

Windsor, NSW, Australia

http://afpwebworks.com

.com, .net, .org etc domains start at A$20/year

 

RE: [WSG] Two form styling problems

[Michael Kear]

OK so I added a single keystroke to the html and two keystrokes to the CSS,
and in areas not related to the problem,  and uploaded them.

The changes have made no difference. I still have the problem. So can anyone
see why these problems appear? 

Cheers
Mike Kear
Windsor, NSW, Australia
AFP Webworks
http://afpwebworks.com
.com,.net,.org domains from AUD$20/Year



-Original Message-
From: Adam Steer [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] 
Sent: Monday, 30 August 2004 3:04 PM
To: Michael Kear
Subject: Re: [WSG] Two form styling problems

Hi Michael

...check your code and CSS first - neither validate. The code is simple 
- just close your link tag where the stylesheet is called. The CSS I 
haven't looked at in detail but w3c didn't like it too much...

In Safari, I see similar problems to what you report in Mozilla - also, 
the submit button appears completely unstyled and the 'message' box 
pops out of the orange background.

In ie5 [MacOS X], it probably looks about right, but your drop-down 
list doesn't line up with the 'e-mail' field...

Anyway, validate things first and see how you go...

Cheers
Adam. 




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[WSG] Two form styling problems

[Michael Kear]

I’m styling a form on a new site, and have two
problems that perhaps you knowledgeable people can help me with: 

 

Form is at http://koalaframing.com.au/contactus.cfm ,  style sheet is at http://koalaframing.com.au/styles/koalaframing.css 

 

 

[A] I’m puzzled at why my submit button has leapt up
to the top of the textarea box  but only in Firefox.  In IE it’s
in the correct place, at the bottom of the form, and also in Opera.  (Netscape
I haven’t been able to check because my copy of NN is broken and needs to
be reinstalled)  

 

[B] in Firefox, when I apply any styling to the drop-down
select box, it loses the down-arrow on the right side, so firefox users will assume
it’s not a drop-down box.   Is this a bug or a ‘feature
enhancement’? or is there some styling I need to apply to put the arrow
back?

 

 

 

 

 

Cheers

Mike Kear

AFP Webworks

Windsor, NSW, Australia

http://afpwebworks.com

.com, .net, .org etc domains start at A$20/year

 

RE: [WSG] Online browser XTHML editor

[Michael Kear]

I've been looking for a year now for an editor that will produce XHTML. I've
chatted electronically with most of the developers/owners and I think as a
group they didn't have XHTML on their radar screens at all.  The guy who
produces FCKEditor for example ( have trouble reading that without mildly
shocking myself) told me that yes, he must get around to doing a XHTML
version one day soon.   Until then it'll change all tags to upper case,
it'll allow  and  tags.

The only one I've found that produces XHTML is a coldfusion one that Italian
Massimo Foti has made.  It has the added advantage of a reduced feature set
too, so people can't add a hundred fonts etc to their text.   It's a lot
better at restricting the user's choices to your style sheet options than
the others are it seems. 

Disclaimer: let me add that I have only looked at the coldfusion apps
because that's all I need - there may well be other apps that do XHTML in
PHP or .ASP or whatever.

Cheers
Mike Kear
Windsor, NSW, Australia
AFP Webworks
http://afpwebworks.com
.com,.net,.org domains from AUD$20/Year



-Original Message-
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On
Behalf Of Sarah Peeke (XERT)
Sent: Tuesday, 24 August 2004 5:52 PM
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: Re: [WSG] Online browser XTHML editor

I've found a half way measure at: 
http://www.flyspeck.net which does not require a 
CMS in place, but it doesn't appear to handle 
XHTML.

Can anyone tell me how much of an issue this 
would be if the client is only updating 
paragraphs of text, an image upload - simple 
stuff? There is some degree of control over 
Flyspeck's editable areas (ref: 
http://www.flyspeck.net/technical_info/more_control.php 
)

Thanks for all the other suggestions which I'm looking into too.
Sarah



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RE: [WSG] Unaccessible - NY Attorney General busts two big name sites

[Michael Kear]

I was interested that the Australian Human Rights and Equal Opportunity
Commission uses tables for layout in their web site at:

http://www.hreoc.gov.au/disability_rights/index.html 
http://www.hreoc.gov.au/disability_rights/faq/f.a.q.html

Cheers
Mike Kear
Windsor, NSW, Australia
AFP Webworks
http://afpwebworks.com



-Original Message-
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On
Behalf Of Geoff Deering
Sent: Friday, 20 August 2004 8:18 PM
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: RE: [WSG] Unaccessible - NY Attorney General busts two big name
sites

[snip]

In this post I am just trying to make a few points; 1) That there is
probably a lot of opportunity to take corps to court, but the disability
community are more tolerant than liturguous.  2) Big corps are basically
pretty ignorant about accessibility (but this movement in design is probably
the best thing to begin changing that).

http://www.w3.org/WAI/Policy/#Australia
http://www.hreoc.gov.au/disability_rights/index.html
http://www.hreoc.gov.au/disability_rights/faq/f.a.q.html

___
Geoff Deering


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RE: [WSG] applying style to the 3rd column of a table?

[Michael Kear]

Ah! That'll be why I didn't archive it.  I figure life's too short to be
fretting about IE and non-IE capabilities. I figure while I have the say-so
on the design aspect of a site, I'll just not use anything that doesn't work
in all browsers. i.e. if it's IE only,  it doesn't get done.   The vast
majority of things can be achieved in a number of ways, and if a design
feature requires some proprietary or non-standard behaviour in the browser,
then I'll go looking for ways to achieve the same thing, perhaps in a
different way, but in a cross-browser standards compliant fashion. 

Of course if your job is to code up the design handed to you by a designer,
signed off by the client, then perhaps you don't have quite as much
flexibility.

But in general, unless a technique is widely supported, I don't bother to go
into much detail with it.  When the new version of CSS is released, I'll
read about it, understand the issues, but won't bother learning much about
it until there is a wide acceptance of it in the marketplace.

There's enough going through my mind for me to learn about, without having
to learn things I'm maybe going to use some time in the future, maybe not.

Cheers
Mike Kear
Windsor, NSW, Australia
AFP Webworks
http://afpwebworks.com



-Original Message-
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On
Behalf Of scott parsons
Sent: Friday, 13 August 2004 4:32 PM
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: Re: [WSG] applying style to the 3rd column of a table?

you can but only in IE due to IE having some weirdness occuring in the 
way they layout the page.
BUT
if you style the columns using the IE method, and style the third td 
(td+td+td etc) which will be understood by most modern browsers you 
should be able to get the column styled for everybody.

perhaps not the best way to go about things but it will work

s



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RE: [WSG] applying style to the 3rd column of a table?

[Michael Kear]

I thought I read somewhere that you can style tables by columns, just as you
can by rows and cells.In the article I read, the example showed TH
across the top of the table, and the first column of cells was styled using
some kind of column selector, not picking the first cell in each row.  (this
is one of those senior moments I guess, because I can't find where I read
that now - it was in one of Russ's "light reading" posts a few months back I
think.)

But if it's what I think it is, that would allow you to give a column an id
and style it that way.

No?

Cheers
Mike Kear
Windsor, NSW, Australia
AFP Webworks
http://afpwebworks.com


-Original Message-
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On
Behalf Of Patrick H. Lauke
Sent: Friday, 13 August 2004 1:56 PM
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: Re: [WSG] applying style to the 3rd column of a table?

You may want to look at COLGROUPs
http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/struct/tables.html#h-11.2.4

Patrick H. Lauke

Justin French wrote:

> Hi Folks,
> 
> Is there any way (without ids or classes) to target the 3rd (for 
> example) column of a table to apply styles?
> 
> What I'm hoping for is something like...
> 
> table td[3]{ text-align:right; }
> 
> ... but I can't see anything like that in my references.
> 
> TIA


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[WSG] Followup- what's happening with design project

[Michael Kear]

A quick followup to let you know what’s happened since
I asked for volunteers to help me build a standards-compliant accessible radio station
web site ….

 

I’ve had 5 designers put their hands up to volunteer,
and I’m in the process of evaluating them now.   I’m
taking account of the fact that they haven’t got a lot of experience in
designing XHTML sites,  and hopefully we’ll end up with a showcase
site that’ll stand in good stead in the portfolio and help them get ahead
in this business as a result. 

 

Also, Peter Ottery offered to submit a design, in the event
that no one came forward.   Given his already heavy workload at F2, I
think this was extraordinarily generous of him, and I’m most grateful for
his offer. 

 

I think once we’ve set out a plan for the new site and
how we’re going to do it (and who’s going to do what)  we
might set up a blog somewhere so anyone else who’s interested can follow
the progress.  It’s not as though it needs to be highly
secret.   Would that be of interest to anyone?  

 

Anyway, I’m very grateful to Peter Ottery for offering
to submit a design, and to the 5 people who volunteered.   Regardless
of how this turns out, I will try to make sure they all get some kind of recognition
for volunteering.

 

 

Cheers

Mike Kear

AFP Webworks

Windsor, NSW, Australia

http://afpwebworks.com

 

RE: [WSG] Ikon, where are you?

[Michael Kear]

Out of office replies can get out of hand. 

I witnessed a case where someone late on a Friday night, set their OoO on,
with a very helpful message, then just before leaving for home on a long
weekend, though he'd better send off a message to someone in my client's
customer service department.   Who had also set an OoO reply on.  Both
people turned off their computer, picked up their coats, walked out the door
and had a happy long weekend. 

While they were busy relaxing, the mail servers were busy sending email.
The first message sent to our client caused our customer service person's
out of office reply, which was sent back to the originator, who sent an out
of office reply, which came back to our customer service person, who sent an
out of office reply,  who sent back ...    you can see what's happening.

When we all came into the office on Tuesday there were over a hundred
thousand messages and the mail server was stopped for having no disk space.
And so was the other person's.  No email in or out to either organisation. 

That was probably enough to give the network admins heartburn.  But as soon
as they started deleting all those thousands of OoO replies, more came
flooding in because they'd been backed up at servers along the chain from
one person to the other. 

And while they were working that out, everyone else was coming into the
office and calling them complaining that they had no email in over the
weekend and did that mean the server was down?  And what should they do
about it? And why cant they start work because there is no email? Etc etc.

Sorry - had nothing whatever to do with web standards, but I chuckled about
that for months and I was just reminded about it.  Thought you might be
amused too. If not.. sorry. 

Cheers
Mike Kear
Windsor, NSW, Australia
AFP Webworks
http://afpwebworks.com



-Original Message-
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On
Behalf Of Ben Bishop
Sent: Saturday, 31 July 2004 2:22 PM
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: Re: [WSG] Ikon, where are you?

Hi Ted,

This reply is recognition of your post, though the message is for all
list members:

Yes, "Out of Office" are annoying. This one particularly, as the
automated response was sending back to the list. Usually they're set
to reply to the original poster.

[snip]



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[WSG] OT: Last call for interested young desgners

[Michael Kear]

Sorry for the kind-of off-topic post, so rather than
compound my transgression please respond directly to me at [EMAIL PROTECTED] rather than on
the list. 

 

I have to make a decision in the next few days about how we’re
going to design our new site, and if you want to be considered, now’s the
time to let me know.  This job would suit a young web designer starting
out, or someone who hasn’t got the opportunity to design a
standards-compliant site and wants one in their portfolio.   

 

Here’s the deal; 

 

It’s a radio station – well organised and well
run, with state-of-the art equipment and we’ve been broadcasting 24 hours
a day for 25 years.  We contribute programs to the national satellite
network and also some programs networked worldwide.   We’re a
very advanced station from the point of view of broadcasting, but our web site
looks like someone threw it together in an afternoon using a hacked copy of
FrontPage.  The station is prepared to try new things provided they make
sense, so it’s a wide brief for a designer. 

 

We’re going to build a fully dynamic site using web
standards,  and build to XHTML 1.0 strict if we can manage it, XHTML1.0
transitional if we cant.  We want a site that’s as accessible as we can
make it.   We’re about half way through the coding the database
and maintenance objects and getting close to needing to have a design to work
to now.   There’s a site map already and we’re building
it with lots of flexibility for adding and removing parts of the site dynamically.

 

The design brief is to create an eyecatching design for the
radio station using CSS and the only required element is to retain the current
logo – its on tshirts, caps, pens, printed matter, our outside broadcast
bus, signs transmitter etc etc so we cant change that.   Other wise,
the only limitation on the design is good sense.   We don't want the
designer to build the site, merely to produce a design for the site- overall
design colour scheme, look and feel, a few pages etc for us to use as
templates. 

 

Payment: 

Yeah  right.   This is a volunteer station and
I’m contributing my skills and hosting as part of my contribution to the station.  
There is no payment.  But we can pay you in other ways –
recommendations, your logo on the site so you can use it in your portfolio (that’s
why it will probably suit a young designer starting out rather than someone who
has a portfolio already).  If you’re in the western Sydney area, it
might suit you to have some ads on the station too.     Basically
we’re asking a lot and we want to make it worth while to whoever designs
the site, but realise it’s not good business for someone with an
established reputation as a designer.    The short answer is we
can’t pay money but we want to make it worth your effort in other ways if
we can.  We don't want anything for free, just don't have money to pay you
with.

 

There might well be some paying work coming up for you later
if you do a reasonable job.  Yes I know, I’ve heard that lots of
times too.  You’ll just have to trust me.

 

If you’re interested in this outlandish
proposition,  want to have a free go at an advanced site in the media
sector, to build a site that is better than the huge number of pretty useless
and non-standard radio station sites,  and do it to the latest accessibility
and compliant techniques,  then reply by email or give me a call on
02-4577-4898. 

 

 

Cheers

Mike Kear

AFP Webworks

Windsor, NSW, Australia

http://afpwebworks.com

 

RE: [WSG] technique of converting to tablefree layout

[Michael Kear]

I've mostly used the good old MkI delete key - the most-used key on my
keyboard.  When I started renovating web sites, and using word docs and
FrontPage sites, I tried using automated methods - search and replace and
the like - and found there was always something left.  A single  or a 
somewhere that affected half the remaining page.  Or a  tag that
didn't exactly match the search criteria so it would be left.  Or a table
that I really did want kept would be deleted.These fixes I found would
often take just as long as going through the page and deleting stuff in the
first place.

Another way is to select/copy from the rendered page in a browser.  That way
you only pick up the content if you get the select right, and you don't pick
up all the associated table structure.

Dreamweaver has powerful search and replace functions.  For example, you can
have it delete all  tags, regardless of the attributes, or all 
tags.   And with a single click you can convert the file to XHTML.  It'll go
through the file closing off tags, fixing case, adding quotes to attributes
etc.   

And Dreamweaver's Word Clean-up function is magic.   Watch it reduce a
simple word html document of 500 lines to about 50 or fewer with no change
in the rendered content! 

Cheers
Mike Kear
Windsor, NSW, Australia
AFP Webworks
http://afpwebworks.com


-Original Message-
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On
Behalf Of Lea de Groot
Subject: Re: [WSG] technique of converting to tablefree layout
[snip]
Yes, once someone said 'regexp' i went Doh! and got on with the job :)
What can I say, except I have a headcold? 
:)

Thanks, all
Lea
-- 
Lea de Groot


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[WSG] Trapping margins .. whats that?

[Michael Kear]

I took a look at this article mentioned in Russ's "light reading" missive
today, 

[quote]
The Practice of CSS Column Design: Boxes in Columns
http://www.communitymx.com/abstract.cfm?cid=CB7B3
[/quote]


The article includes this statement:
[quote]
Be aware that either borders or padding can trap the margin inside the div,
so it's possible to use as little as 1px top and bottom padding on the div
to permanently trap the margin of a child element within the div.
[/quote]


What does it mean to "trap the margin"?  It's unclear to me at least whether
it's a good thing or not to 'trap the margin' and what it means when you do.

Can anyone explain for me please?

Cheers
Mike Kear
Windsor, NSW, Australia
AFP Webworks
http://afpwebworks.com




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RE: [WSG] A California meeting? was Brisbane July Meeting - Report

[Michael Kear]

Ah yes,  Los Angeles, Paradise.  At least you can SEE the air they make you
breathe.  

Cheers
Mike Kear


<<>>


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RE: [WSG] Good radio station sites?

[Michael Kear]

Title: FW: [WSG] Good radio station sites?








Thank you  Peter, that’s
exactly the idea I had in mind.  I could design it myself but I think it’s
an opportunity for a designer starting out in standards/css/xhtml design.    It’s
a project that doesnt pay anything in money terms. But there’ll be credit
on the site, and the designer can put it in their portfolio.   There is
no restrictions on the design, except for good sense, and the fact that we don't
want to change our  logo because its used in lots of places.  
So a designer has a pretty wide brief.  It’s a way for a designer to
learn to design a site that covers a lot of different types of pages,  and
using only CSS for styling.    On a resume that’s going to
look pretty good.  A media site, designed to the latest standards.  
Looks good to me. 

 

 

 

Not many people have time to take on
probono projects, but I have 3 I look after, as part of my commitment to my
hobbies and a way of adding back to organisations that do a lot for
me.   But it also offers me the way to use my skills and learn to do
things where I don't have a client wanting that done right
now. For example, when I needed to learn how to convert
a site from old fashioned tables based layout to CSS based layout, I didn’t
have a client ready to do that at the time.  But I have these probono
sites, and I picked one for a re-vamp.  I needed to learn how to make a
content management system,  and didn’t have a well-heeled client
ready to build one, so I built one for one of my probono sites.

 

If this site works out as well as we
hope,  we’re going to be making an issue of it on the station. Our
listenership covers most of the Sydney metro area and we run ads pointing to
the site 8 times a day. We’re going to be raising its profile a lot in the
national radio organisation CBAA and other media groups.  We’re
going to be putting effort into making it a feature of the station.  
Our station is one of the oldest community stations in the country – 25 years
continuous 24hour a day broadcasting and we are technically very
advanced.   For example our sports calling equipment is more advanced
than 2GBs.     We might run the station on a shoestring but
the equipment we use is state-of-the-art.  It’s an all-digital station
and our gear isn’t old second hand cast-offs from other stations. 
We’re one of the few radio stations in the country that can run 3 outside
broadcasts simultaneously with no one back in the studio in town.  
(we recently had a group doing crosses from a hospital fundraiser, and calling
the NRL game at Panthers Stadium at the same time as running the station from
the Hawkesbury Show from our OB bus).   The station is prepared to
have a go at things.

 

As to the design brief,  the station
management has accepted my idea that we should rebuild our pretty boring site
into something that’s a showcase – an example for others to
follow.  We’ve laid out a pretty ambitious siteplan for the content
we’re going to have, and I have ambitious plans for how I’m going
to build it.   I want to use the latest coldfusion techniques, and
use XHTML strict if I can manage it, so the resulting code is right up to
date.   And we need a design that’s eyecatching, up to date, and
cuts some new ground in media web sites.

 

I hope someone sees some personal benefit
from committing their time to doing a design for it.    I’ve
found doing probono work gives me the confidence to say “yes I can build
a site like that” because with probono I can take risks and try things I wouldn’t
be game to try on a client’s dime.

 

I haven’t had any offers so far
Peter, but if I don't, I’ll definitely take you up on it. Thanks for your
offer.

 

Cheers

Mike Kear

Windsor, NSW, Australia

AFP Webworks

http://afpwebworks.com



 

 

 







From:
Peter Ottery [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] 
Sent: Friday, 16 July 2004 10:52
AM
To: 'Michael Kear'
Subject: FW: [WSG] Good radio
station sites?



 

Hi
Michael, 
sounds like a really worthwhile
cause and good on you for taking on the challenge! :) 

I'm
guessing (and hoping) you get a few offers from young designers that have some
time on their hands and are willing to contribute some design talent to the
project.

But in
the event that you dont - let me know and I'd be prepared to contribute a
design for it. 

What i
mean is - theres potentially some young and talented kids out there that could
really benefit from adding something like this to their portfolio (and get
something out of the exercise for themselves) but yeah - i know what its like,
and everyone is busy - so if you dont get any offers to help out - let me know
and I'd love to help out.

pete




Peter Ottery 
Head of Design 
f2 Network 

(02) 8596
4450 
[EMAIL PROTECTED]

www.f2.com.au 

RE: [WSG] Good radio station sites?

[Michael Kear]

My research of radio station sites in the last 48 hours has told me that the
vast majority of them are ... well to put it bluntly,  they're a wank. 

Few of them provide content that's relevant to the activities of the
stations, aside from program guides and some pictures of some of the hosts.
But of course that could well mean that the stations don't have much of an
idea themselves about a purpose for their existence.  No sense of
involvement with their communities, and trying to engage the activities of
their listeners.   I haven't found a single one yet that's even close to
being built on web standards.

The notable exceptions would be the BBC and the Australian ABC sites and the
US NPR sites which have heaps of content related to the station's shows and
activities.


The ones that do provide relevant content are pretty dismal in web standards
terms - pretty awful looking and the code is amateur for most of them.

So we're embarking on what we hope is going to be a different kind of radio
station site.  Our station is a community station, running on a shoestring,
but our sound isn't amateur so our web site can't be. Our station is
supposed to be a part of our local community and we're going to have a go at
involving the community in the web site as well as the station.  Community
events, local news that sort of thing, if we can figure out the way to do it
without taking a lot of ongoing effort.

And we're going to build it using XHTML.   Strict if we can go that far.
We're going to fully separate content from logic from presentation so
updates in the future will be easy.  In other words it's going to be a proof
of the concept that building to web standards saves development time, effort
and ongoing maintenance.   Even though it's a probono site for me, we're
going to keep records of the time spent.

Does anyone want to have a go at the design side of it?  We want to produce
a flexible, outstanding standards-based site and have few limitations on
what we can and can't do, other than functional limitations.   We can't pay
money - there's no money for the project. It's my contribution to the
station, but we can pay with ads on the station. It would suit someone
working around western Sydney if the ads would mean something to your
business. 


Cheers
Mike Kear
Windsor, NSW, Australia
AFP Webworks
http://afpwebworks.com


-Original Message-
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On
Behalf Of John Horner
Sent: Thursday, 15 July 2004 5:32 PM
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: Re: [WSG] Good radio station sites?

>I'd be interested in John Horner's comments on this, as he's a 
>member of this list.

Hey, put me on the spot why don't you?

>Given the ABC is a government organisation shouldn't they really be 
>fulfilling some requirements of the DDA?

Yes, yes we should, though traditionally Triple J has operated very 
much as their own unit, both in terms of online and the organisation 
in general, and that's probably as it should be. I really can't 
answer for their decisions or even be sure what they were.

>Nice design tho'.

Well exactly.



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[WSG] Good radio station sites?

[Michael Kear]

Does anyone know of any decent standards-based radio station
sites?  I’ve been looking around lately for a project and I haven’t
found a single one that is any good at all from an accessibility/standards
standpoint.

 

It seems for the majority of radio stations they’ve
either let their promotions department go crazy and produce something totally
off-the-wall in design terms, then tried their darndest to force html to
reproduce that on a screen,  or they’ve gone to the other extreme and got
Billy Jones from next door to do it, because he does HTML at high school and he’ll
only cost them $50, a tshirt and a couple of free CDs for the project.

 

Can anyone point me to any really professional, high-quality,
standards-based radio station web sites?

 

Cheers

Mike Kear

AFP Webworks

Windsor, NSW, Australia

http://afpwebworks.com

 

RE: [WSG] I've done it again ...

[Michael Kear]

No it wasn't that one Mordechai, but it's a terrific article.   That's a
fantastic resource.  And it can build your styles automatically too!!
Thanks for finding it.

I never fail to be astonished  at the worthwhile and downright practical
ideas coming from this list, day after day. 

Thanks again!


Cheers
Mike Kear
Windsor, NSW, Australia
AFP Webworks
http://afpwebworks.com



-Original Message-
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On
Behalf Of Mordechai Peller
Sent: Wednesday, 7 July 2004 12:20 AM
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: Re: [WSG] I've done it again ...

Michael Kear wrote:

> I've lost a reference to another excellent article I read about how to 
> guarantee that two or three columns will go all the way to the bottom 
> of the page, regardless of the length of any of the columns. Can 
> anyone help?
>

Was it "http://positioniseverything.net/piefecta-rigid.html";?


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[WSG] I've done it again ...

[Michael Kear]

I’ve lost a reference to another excellent article I
read about how to guarantee that two or three columns will go all the way to the
bottom of the page, regardless of the length of any of the columns.    Can anyone
help?

 

The article I’m looking for shows how to have columns
styled all the way to the bottom of the page whether the centre (main) column
is the longer or not.

 

I think I’m going to have to make an index of all
these articles so I can find them again.  I read good stuff and think “that’s
useful and I’ll use that next time I have to do that!”  only when
that time comes around, I can’t find it again.    How do the rest of you
handle that? 

 

 

Cheers

Mike Kear

AFP Webworks

Windsor, NSW, Australia

http://afpwebworks.com

 

RE: [WSG] Looking for help and critiques on a new site

[Michael Kear]

Seona, I feel your pain.  There have been times I've asked serious questions
to a list and had either flippant replies or no replies at all.  I've wanted
to say "LOOK YOU BUNCH OF B*S*A*DS, I REALLY NEED TO KNOW THIS.  YOU ANSWER
EVERYONE ELSE"S QUESTIONS WHAT"S SO DIFFERENT ABOUT MINE?"   In many years
of being on lists, I've never found that giving in to such temptation really
works.  All you do is get flooded with lots of 'chill out' or 'hey lose the
attitude' messages.

But no one here is obliged to help you.  We're all just like you - doing our
thing as best we can and sharing our knowledge where we can.  If no one
responded, perhaps no one wanted to, or perhaps no one really saw your
question, or perhaps the people who might otherwise have helped were busy
doing other stuff or any of a dozen other reasons.   The only thing you can
really do is just ask your question again politely and see if that works
better.   Perhaps it was timing that was the problem, nothing to do with
you. 


Anyway, if it helps you,   you have a spelling error on your page-
Australians spell it 'organisation" not "organization". 


Cheers
Mike Kear

_
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On
Behalf Of Seona Bellamy
Sent: Sunday, 4 July 2004 8:55 AM
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: RE: [WSG] Looking for help and critiques on a new site

Well, I've been away from email for a few days, and I've carefully combed
through the ton of posts I came back to, but it looks like the response to
my queries has been truly underwhelming. I do offer my sincere thanks to the
two people who responded to my JavaScript problem, but I must confess to
being disappointed that no one has offered any critiques of the site itself
or solutions (or even suggestions) on how to deal with the other two
problems. When I put the question about the JavaScript validation there, it
was something of an afterthought which I'm now almost wishing I hadn't
included (although that might have meant that the whole post would simply
vanish into obscurity like when I first posted these questions a few weeks
ago).

So I'm left with a few possible conclusions:
a) The questions weren't on-topic enough to be worth answering - don't think
this one is the case.
b) The questions weren't interesting enough to be worth answering.
c) I'm just chatting to myself here - really hope this one isn't the case.

[snip]
<>

RE: [WSG] Styling Text...

[Michael Kear]

Isn’t 
the more semantically correct way to do this?   (and for italics, the
 tags)?

 

Cheers

Mike Kear

Windsor, NSW, Australia

AFP Webworks

http://afpwebworks.com

 









From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
[mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf
Of Chris Stratford
Sent: Saturday, 3 July 2004 12:32
PM
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: [WSG] Styling Text...



 

Hey WSG,

I am just writing because I have been wondering if there is a better way of
styling text.
Since  etc... are all outlawed and now
depreciated...
How do you style your inner  text?

[snip]

 

RE: [WSG] 100% Inaccessible

[Michael Kear]

I guess I’m learning something about
design after all!    I looked at that e-booking site and decided
it looks frankly .. ‘old fashioned’ in web terms.  Meaning it’s
looking S 2001 now.  I have a friend in the games business, and I looked
at his site yesterday and it looked very 1990s to me.   Old fashioned
and ‘been there, done that’.  (I didn’t tell him though –
he’s a very good friend and very proud of it).

 

So perhaps I’m picking up some
design stuff after all.  A few years ago someone could have said a site
was old fashioned and unless it was pure text I’d have been completely
perplexed.

 

But of course that is an important aspect
of what we’re doing here.   When we figure an accessible/css
site is old fashioned, it’s a simple matter of crafting another set of
style sheets and load them up.  No need to touch any of the logic,
database access, login/authentication stuff,  just redo the presentation
stuff. (Yes, I know a site redesign is frequently no
trivial task but I’m sure you get my point).

 

 

As far as this particular site goes, 
if ebooking.com.au had simply validated his code on each page, it would have probably
run fine in all browsers.

 

Cheers

Mike Kear

Windsor, NSW, Australia

AFP Webworks

http://afpwebworks.com



 

 











From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
[mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf
Of Chris Stratford
Subject: [WSG] 100% Inaccessible



 

I know this is OT.
But I have had it up to here (**motions towards my ceiling**) with websites
that dont even load in other browsers...

I just send www.ebooking.com.au a very
vivid email about how their website is TERRIBLY INACCESSIBLE...

Try and load it in any other browser than IE...
AFAIK - It wont load in:
    FireFox... (I assume Mozilla too then!)
    Safari...

Just a little OT rant...
No need to reply to the list.
Send whatever hate URLS you have to my inbox...

- Chris Stratford

[WSG] Importing hacks into CSS? Whats the point?

[Michael Kear]

I was reading the article Integrated Web Design: Strategies for Long-Term
CSS Hack Management: http://www.informit.com/articles/article.asp?p=170511 
Referred to by Russ in his very useful "links for light reading" and I read
this article. 

Amongst other things it suggests not putting hacks into your CSS file, but
instead importing them from another external hack file.  Like this: 

[code]
/* importing hi-pass filter */
@import "hi-pass.css";
[/code]

The article says that by using this method, you have all your hacks in files
external to the main css file and can easily be dispensed with when you
finally determine that time has moved along and the hacks are no longer
required. 

Fair enough. I understand the point, I think, except that I don't think you
gain anything at all  by it, except more complexity in the site's file
structure.  Every hack now represents one more file that has to be uploaded,
version controlled, backed up, managed etc.

I'd have thought it was simpler to have the hack actually in the main css
file, and commented adequately so it was easy to find there.Or am I
missing the point? 

Does anyone else agree? Disagree?


Cheers
Mike Kear
Windsor, NSW, Australia
AFP Webworks
http://afpwebworks.com




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RE: [WSG] Problem with floated divs in gallery site

[Michael Kear]

John, I do like your idea of using the program method of working out the
padding for the top.  That's an excellent idea.  I'm in the process of
making my own ColdFusion picture gallery ready for sharing with others, and
this trick of yours will go well with it.

Very elegant answer I think!

And the finished page looks terrific too.  Well done.


Cheers
Mike Kear
Windsor, NSW, Australia
AFP Webworks
http://afpwebworks.com



-Original Message-
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On
Behalf Of John Penlington
Sent: Friday, 25 June 2004 2:25 AM
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: RE: [WSG] Problem with floated divs in gallery site

Hi all again!

RE: My problem with floated divs in gallery site - and trying to get those
thumbnail images to align at the bottom.

I've solved the problem - in two ways - and thanks for those suggestions.
You'll find the result at:
http://www.bluemountainsgardener.info/fgtest/max_miller_solved.asp

It shows both solutions - the first using divs and the second using a CSS
table.  Both are on the same page with CSS embedded.
The results look exactly the same in IE6, Mozilla 1.5 and Opera 7.23 I'm
keeping my fingers crossed for Apple Mac browsers !!


For the "div" version, I used program code (ASP) to subtract each
thumbnail's height from 100 (the maximum height of any thumbnail) and made
that the value for *padding-top* as an inline style for the img tag.

As each thumbnail is a live link to a bigger image on a different page, I
ended up having to add a*border='0'* attribute to the image tag to get rid
of the link-induced border around the image plus the padding. This was
sloppy coding, I know, but it was so late at night!!

[snip]



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RE: [WSG] Problem with floated divs in gallery site

[Michael Kear]

What if you changed your design a little 
so you don't need to do that?    Like for example putting the caption on the
top instead of the bottom?

 

I haven’t tried this but what about putting
the image and its caption in a div,  then putting THAT in another div, with
fixed height attributes and have the image/caption div at the bottom of it? 
Cant do that?

 

Cheers

Mike Kear

Windsor, NSW, Australia

AFP Webworks

http://afpwebworks.com



 

 

RE: [WSG] pixel to ems converter

[Michael Kear]

There is no direct conversion.  You cant make such a conversion. 

1 pixel is a unit on the screen.  There are something like 76 pixels per
inch on a PC screen or 96 pixels per inch on a mac screen.

One em is the width of the character "M" in whatever size the user has set
as his default font size. It's a variable set in the user's browser.

Therefore, one em can be any size at all, depending on what setting the user
has.   14 pixels will always be the same distance regardless of what setting
the user has on his font size.

Cheers
Mike Kear
Windsor, NSW, Australia
AFP Webworks
http://afpwebworks.com



-Original Message-
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On
Behalf Of Michael Andrews
Sent: Monday, 21 June 2004 5:12 PM
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: [WSG] pixel to ems converter

Hi,
Just thought I ask if there is bit of math or a web site that can accurately

convert pixels to ems.
If I want to size an image in ems so it will scale with text re-sizing I 
kinda doing it manually at the moment by dividing by 12 and guessing from 
there.
I thought there might be a site somewhere that you select your font etc and 
imput you pixel size and it does an acurate conversion. Or am I 
dreamm..in'

Thanks if anyone can answer


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RE: [WSG] Interesting reading

[Michael Kear]

I guess my characterisation of this author didn't meet with universal
approval.  Fair enough Lea, but I don't take any of it back.

Some thoughts about what he's written:

IF Microsoft introduced the most fantastic, whiz-bang, easy-to-use new
feature in the next version of IE, that wouldn't be enough to get a wise
developer to use it.  It's only when the majority of the site users can use
it (and for most web developers that includes mozilla users, mac users,
opera users et.al) that they'll actually build it into their sites.  Unless
I have a site where 95% or more are using this new browser I wouldn't use
the new feature.  So Microsoft and Netscape and the others can innovate all
they want and I approve of that, but until there's a positive advantage for
me as a site owner or developer, it's all academic.  

Oh, and what do we have when the other browsers all support this new
feature?? A STANDARD!!

He says that "If they, Microsoft won't even make their very own webpages
compliant, don't expect the next version of IE to be fully compatible with
other browsers."But he ignores the point that it's in Microsoft's
interests to have their pages break in other browsers.  I had a MS techo
tell me once when I tried to point out a broken page in Netscape, "well you
should be using a proper browser instead of Netscape."  That's ok for
Microsoft - its in their interests - but its not ok for the vast mass of us,
who need every user we can get.  I'm not here to plug Microsoft's products
or Firefox or Opera - they'll have to do it without me. I'm here to develop
my own business and those of my clients, and they need to have sites that
are workable and practical for as many of their users as possible.  

I have yet to find a better way to achieve this than to omit all proprietary
browser features and stick to valid, compliant code.


Why do large organisations not switch to standards compliance? 

Well some do.  A splendid case in point is the Sydney Morning Herald, which
site we've heard about and witnessed the change right here on this list.
Through that we know that it's not a trivial matter to change a large system
to or from anything.   At MXDU this year, Macromedia's site manager (was it
Sean Cornfield?) talked about how Macromedia is moving towards compliance.
He said they have 40,000 pages to convert, and they have to do it in stages
as they get to review each part of the site.   It's a massive job and they
just don't have the money to dedicate to switching to standards compliance
if there isn't any other reason to touch that part of the site.  SO he said
their site is moving towards compliance but will take time to get there.

Sounds like a sensible view to me.

The author of that site's an idiot.  No he's not ... he's a  idiot.

Cheers
Mike Kear
Windsor, NSW, Australia
AFP Webworks
http://afpwebworks.com



-Original Message-
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On
Behalf Of Lea de Groot
Sent: Monday, 14 June 2004 9:09 PM
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: Re: [WSG] Interesting reading

On Mon, 14 Jun 2004 20:00:45 +1000, Marc Greenstock wrote:
> http://www.decloak.com/Dev/CSSTables/CSS_Tables_05.aspx

Gentlemen,

The article in question uses inflammatory language and fails to back up 
its claims.
Might I suggest we retain our professional demeanour and not sink to 
the author's level?

or
Mind your language, please!

Lea


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RE: [WSG] Interesting reading

[Michael Kear]

Ok let me expand on my earlier opinion and give a bit more detail  

He's a bloody idiot. 


Cheers
Mike Kear
Windsor, NSW, Australia
AFP Webworks
http://afpwebworks.com



-Original Message-
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On
Behalf Of Marc Greenstock
Sent: Monday, 14 June 2004 8:01 PM
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: [WSG] Interesting reading

A friend of mine sent me this link;
http://www.decloak.com/Dev/CSSTables/CSS_Tables_05.aspx

He loves to play devils advocate so he just refuses to adopt current 
standards, it's ok though cause he's the competition.

Happy reading :)

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RE: [WSG] Interesting reading

[Michael Kear]

The author's an idiot.

Cheers
Mike Kear
Windsor, NSW, Australia
AFP Webworks
http://afpwebworks.com



-Original Message-
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On
Behalf Of Marc Greenstock
Sent: Monday, 14 June 2004 8:01 PM
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: [WSG] Interesting reading

A friend of mine sent me this link;
http://www.decloak.com/Dev/CSSTables/CSS_Tables_05.aspx

He loves to play devils advocate so he just refuses to adopt current 
standards, it's ok though cause he's the competition.

Happy reading :)


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RE: [WSG] file extensions

[Michael Kear]

But in a shared environment,  which is where the vast majority of sites
actually are, all the users on a site would have to stop using .CFM
extensions on their coldfusion pages if you were sending .cfm pages to PHP.
That just isn't practical.  And it would PREVENT people moving their
coldfusion sites into that system without extensive re-writing. Not just
changing filenames, but also all cfincludes references, all custom tag
calls, CFC component calls etc.

Similarly the other way, if you configured the system to process .PHP files
through the cold fusion server.  Everyone would have to stop using .php
extensions for their php files, thus preventing anyone copying a .php site
into that system without re-writing it.

Most of the dynamic sites on the net are actually in shared hosting
environments, not on owned or dedicated servers.

I cant see the point in this standard.  It seems to offer a tiny advantage
for a vast cost, if all you want to do is get rid of .cfm extensions on file
names, and .gif and .jpg extensions on images.  

On the other hand if what you want to get rid of is the
?randID=12324587&clientID3212345 kind of thing, then dump PHP and go with
ColdFusion. It's a piece of cake. There's no need to pass variables from
page to page as a URL string unless you want to.  You can do it internally
using two methods - session variables or client variables.

But to get back to the standards aspect - I cant see the point in having
non-standard installations in a shared hosting environment just to meet this
W3C standard, which doesn't seem to provide any benefits apart from saving a
few bytes in bandwidth.


Cheers
Mike Kear

-Original Message-
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On
Behalf Of James Ellis
Sent: Sunday, 13 June 2004 9:58 PM
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: Re: [WSG] file extensions

Hi

The portability of URI's is an important point here: as discussed, if a 
web developer wants to move from X to Y server side language yet retain 
the URL stucture then this is the way to go, in Apache it's just a 
simple matter of telling it how to handle certain extension-less files.
That said, you should be able to set up a server to handle PHP scripts 
with .cfm extensions via the PHP interpreter and vice versa (as an example).

I wrote an article over at the Sydney PHP Group on doing this with 
Apache, shared hosting or otherwise, questions welcome offlist or post 
to that group.
http://sydney.ug.php.net/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=61

HTH

James


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RE: [WSG] file extensions

[Michael Kear]

I can't think of a single site anywhere on the web that's not using file
extensions for the images on the site.  Does anyone know of one?

And in a shared hosting environment, where you have asp, asp.net, php, cfm,
html and shtml pages all residing and running simultaneously, I can't see
how it would work, in practical terms.  Yes, I know about content
negotiation - NOW - but IIS and Apache (the two most prominent web servers)
don't set up that way, few host administrators would know how to do this,
and all the development tools load their options and config files based on
the file extension. 

This would surely be the LEAST observed standard anywhere on the web
wouldn't it? 

Or have I been living in a different world?

As it happens, I tend to use non-specific urls myself where I can, but
because I want it easy to remember.  For example I'll have the url on my
bluegrass Australia site so that a section is in its own folder. Therefore
to access the magazine section the url is http://bluegrass.org.au/magazine/.
But it's not for any standards reason  - I had no idea until today that
standard existed. But simply for reasons that it's easier for people to
remember.   For the same reason we set our sites up so they don't need any
'www' (but work equally well with the 'www')

Cheers
Mike Kear
Windsor, NSW, Australia
AFP Webworks
http://afpwebworks.com



-Original Message-
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On
Behalf Of Anders Nawroth
Sent: Sunday, 13 June 2004 7:25 PM
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: Re: [WSG] file extensions


Michael Kear wrote:

> What's the point of doing this? Saving 4 characters per image as a way 
> of reducing bandwidth? Is there any other purpose?
>
> */
> /*
>
There is another purpose.

See this W3C Note:
<http://www.w3.org/TR/chips/#gl3>

[snip]


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RE: [WSG] file extensions

[Michael Kear]

What’s the point of doing
this?  Saving 4 characters per image as a way of reducing bandwidth? 
Is there any other purpose? 

 

Cheers

Mike Kear

Windsor, NSW, Australia

AFP Webworks

http://afpwebworks.com



 

 











From:
[EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Christopher Kennon
Sent: Sunday, 13 June 2004 9:28 AM
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: Re: [WSG] file extensions



 

Hi,

Below is the url and excerpt from the passage in question. I've tried it and it
works. The images are displayed, but someone looking over the code commented
that it appeared that an image was used, but the extension was missing. Thus
the question was inspired.

Chris


http://www.sitepoint.com/article/effective-website-acceleration/2

[WSG] Floats changing when mouseover How to fix?

[Michael Kear]

I know I've seen the answer to this somewhere but I'm blowed if I can find
where now.. 

On my page at http://bluegrass.org.au/Magazine/newreleases/index.cfm.
Using IE6,  when you put the mouse over the link "more ."   the float
containing the image reduces in size to match the 'more' link.   Then when
you mouseover the image, which is also a link, you see the whole image
again.

(the CSS is at http://bluegrass.org.au/styles/Bluegrass_Australia.css )

Can anyone tell me what to do about it please?  Or point me to the article
about this that I can't find now?

Cheers
Mike Kear
AFP Webworks
Windsor, NSW, Australia
http://afpwebworks.com



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RE: [WSG] How to Make Your Web Site Work with Windows XP Service Pack 2

[Michael Kear]

So James I have to go off and sign on for yet ANOTHER forum (I already have
more than 800 emails a day to wade through, and 8 forums to check each day)
just to ask if my DHTML menus are going to break here??? 

Surely there's someone here who knows the answer.  How hard is it to just
answer the question instead of starting a debate about whether or not to
discuss it here or whether I should pack my bags and move to another forum.

Cheers
Mike Kear
Windsor, NSW, Australia
AFP Webworks
http://afpwebworks.com


-Original Message-
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On
Behalf Of James Ellis
Sent: Thursday, 10 June 2004 1:57 PM
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: Re: [WSG] How to Make Your Web Site Work with Windows XP Service
Pack 2

Hi all

This would be better discussed on a place like the Sitepoint.com forums, 
as it's about general web development. Having a discussion about where 
you have sent screenshots is not for the list, it's for the person you 
sent the screenshots to.

Cheers
James


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RE: [WSG] How to Make Your Web Site Work with Windows XP Service Pack 2

[Michael Kear]

Not many of these restrictions affect me, because I do most of my dynamic
things on the server side with ColdFusion.  But I read this with some alarm
- does it mean that the DHTML menus I spent so much time getting to work
will cease dropping down? 

[quote]
Q: What does Internet Explorer consider a pop-up window? 
Internet Explorer will attempt to block any window opened automatically
from: 

A script, with the exception of createPopup(). 
Modal and modeless dialogs. 
DHTML elements overlapping content on the page
[/quote]

Cheers
Mike Kear
Windsor, NSW, Australia
AFP Webworks
http://afpwebworks.com




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RE: [WSG] Which editors do you guys recommend?

[Michael Kear]

G'day Kym,

Anything to help a fellow traveller.  

Now if only I could find some contract work to employ my skills gainfully.

Cheers
Mike Kear
Windsor, NSW, Australia
AFP Webworks
http://afpwebworks.com


-Original Message-
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On
Behalf Of Kym Kovan
Sent: Sunday, 6 June 2004 4:52 PM
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: RE: [WSG] Which editors do you guys recommend?

Hi Mike,

You just saved me a heap of typing :-)

Its "Ditto" to for me, plus a bit:

ULtraEdit has to be one of the best text editors about

DreamWeaver when doing designy type stuff

HomeSite+ for pounding out code (my main task in life )

TopStyle for the CSS

And responding to Dante's comment, both Dreamweaver and Homesite have the
tag-completion you mentioned, and don't like, as well as the tag attribute
hint functions that Mike mentioned and in both cases you can turn it off :-)


--

Yours,

Kym 


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RE: [WSG] Which editors do you guys recommend?

[Michael Kear]

Title: [WSG] Which editors do you guys recommend? 








For those that use notepad and type
everything in by hand,  there’s a far better answer for you –
Ultraedit (ultraedit.com).  It is a simple text editor, but it has syntax
highlighting,  can handle files as big as your whole hard drive,  can edit
hex,   you can cut and paste in columns as well as blocks of text.  You can
search and replace over whole groups of files as well as folders.   You can
search and replace on text or on hex as well, so for example you could replace
all the carriage returns or tabs with something else.  I never use notepad for
anything any more.    And it has a FTP function so you can upload your files
directly from ultraedit.   It’s ultraedit for me.

 

But for my normal use, I use dreamweaver
MX2004 usually in code view.  It has tag completion and hints, so it’ll
tell me what the attributes are for any tag as I start to type it, it’ll
correct syntax errors if I want it to, and a click on the up arrow and the file
I’m editing is loaded onto the site.  I don't have to keep remembering
the passwords, addresses etc of all the sites I’m working on.

 

And for CSS editing, I use topstyle.  There
might be better ones, but I started using it a few years ago and never saw the
need to switch away. 

 

 

Cheers

Mike Kear

Windsor, NSW, Australia

AFP Webworks

http://afpwebworks.com



 

 











From:
[EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Sean M. Hall AKA Dante
Sent: Sunday, 6 June 2004 3:54 PM
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: [WSG] Which editors do
you guys recommend?



 

I've been searching for a good editor (don't say BBEdit)
that has syntax highlighting and will not insert stuff (like if I type '(' in a
script tag the editor will insert a ')' right after it, I don't like that). 

Until then it's note pad for me. 

RE: [WSG] At last - here are the dollars in web standards.

[Michael Kear]

You're right, the sarcasm was lost on me.  My bad.  Sorry. 

Cheers
Mike Kear

-Original Message-
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On
Behalf Of J Rodgers
Sent: Thursday, 3 June 2004 1:12 PM
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: Re: [WSG] At last - here are the dollars in web standards.

Actually I was thinking like the consultant that tried to pull the
'standards cost more' argument with two non-profits I do volunteer work for.

The article you link to shows exactly what I have been saying for a long
time.. I think scarcasm was lost in my post. Moving to XHTML/CSS will save
me and my team a load of time and make life easier.. Saves me loads of time
daily with small projects.

Jesse



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RE: [WSG] At last - here are the dollars in web standards.

[Michael Kear]

Jesse you are obviously not a business owner or a general manager. And if
you are, you're not thinking like a business owner.

If you can produce work far faster now than you could before, you can charge
less.   But that's only one of your options.  You charge less if you need a
competitive advantage.  On the other hand you might want charge the same
amount for the site, and keep the additional profit.  It's what happens when
business reduce costs without reducing output. It's called improving
productivity.   In this case you'd be getting twice as much from your
developers, without having to stand behind them with a whip.

Or you can pass some of the saving on to the clients and keep some yourself.
There are a lot of options.  

The point is, when you can produce anything faster, cheaper and better, you
are improving your business and you have choices.   SO far most of the
standards discussion has been about the 'better' part - producing better web
sites - and that's very important.  But here's an article that describes how
using standards lets you produce sites faster and cheaper as well. 

Cheers
Mike Kear
Windsor, NSW, Australia
AFP Webworks
http://afpwebworks.com


-Original Message-
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On
Behalf Of J Rodgers
Sent: Thursday, 3 June 2004 12:03 PM
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: Re: [WSG] At last - here are the dollars in web standards.

Hi, new to the list but I couldn't resist this one as I have seen this first
hand...

The fact it takes less time and saves the client money could be the reason
many designers don't want to leave tables behind. Think about the money a
shop would lose? They would have to get more clients and improve overall.
Its not right, but I have argued with many designers that have said
'standards compliance will cost more.'

I wish I could charge $100 an hour.. Stupid salary :(

Jesse


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RE: [WSG] At last - here are the dollars in web standards.

[Michael Kear]

I've since taken a quick look at macaws.org and at a cursory speed-scan
there doesn't seem to be anything in that article called "What Every Web
Site Owner Should Know About Standards: A Web Standards Primer" at
http://www.maccaws.org/kit/primer/ that has anything about the business
reasons for a web development shop why they should bother to learn it.

The article I'm referring to in this thread is about the business reasons
why web developers ought to be learning these things - namely that you can
produce sites in half the time or less.  And maintain them in the future
with far fewer man-hours.  And the are numbers to back it up.  

Maccaws.org doesn't seem to have any reference to the business of web
development. 


Cheers
Mike Kear
Windsor, NSW, Australia
AFP Webworks
http://afpwebworks.com



-Original Message-
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On
Behalf Of t94xr.net.nz webmaster
Sent: Thursday, 3 June 2004 10:22 AM
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: Re: [WSG] At last - here are the dollars in web standards.

> If this doesn't convince a web professional to take a serious look at
these
> standards nothing will.

and MACCAWS ( www.MACCAWS.org ) doesnt do this?

Camz


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RE: [WSG] At last - here are the dollars in web standards.

[Michael Kear]

I don't know I've never read it.  You go to Maccaws.org and you have to go
off to another link to read anything useful.   Like the old days of the
portals.   No one had any content, only links to more sites that are
themselves just pages of more links.  

I can't be bothered going from link to link to link to link to find
something worth reading. If a poster cant be bothered putting a link to
actual content, why should I have to bother?  Why would I have to hunt out
what on earth Maccaws.org means in order to find out if I want to read it or
not.

If you see my post about the other article, you'll see in my post why I
think it's worth reading.   You don't have to go any further to decide if
you want to follow it up yourself.

"Maccaws.org" tells me nothing except that it's perhaps a site about South
American parrots.


Cheers
Mike Kear
Windsor, NSW, Australia
AFP Webworks
http://afpwebworks.com


-Original Message-
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On
Behalf Of t94xr.net.nz webmaster
Sent: Thursday, 3 June 2004 10:22 AM
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: Re: [WSG] At last - here are the dollars in web standards.

> If this doesn't convince a web professional to take a serious look at
these
> standards nothing will.

and MACCAWS ( www.MACCAWS.org ) doesnt do this?

Camz


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[WSG] At last - here are the dollars in web standards.

[Michael Kear]

Here's an interesting article on the implications for a web development shop
on using web standards for development rather than the antique table-based
methods we all used to use.   This author compares the time taken to develop
a site then and now, after changing to using standards. 

If this doesn't convince a web professional to take a serious look at these
standards nothing will.  
http://www.7nights.com/asterisk/archives/web_standards_roi.php

Some people are interested in accessibility issues.  Others are interested
in standards.  Others are interested in faster sites.   But if I said "I
have a revolutionary technique that will reduce the time and therefore the
cost of building a web site to a THIRD of what it probably takes now," you'd
be interested.  If you thought this claim had any credibility you'd be very
interested indeed or you wouldn't deserve to be in business.

Here's someone else corroborating what I've been saying for months now.

http://www.7nights.com/asterisk/archives/web_standards_roi.php


Cheers
Mike Kear
AFP Webworks
Windsor, NSW, Australia
http://afpwebworks.com



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RE: Re[2]: [WSG] Budget Design

[Michael Kear]

Well appropriate or not for this list, it's been of immense interest for me.
When you're a one-man business, the only way you ever find out your price is
wrong is if you price too high and start losing business.   

I've got every bid I've gone for lately and have been puzzling over whether
that's because I provide a fantastic service and I'm a terrific salesman, or
whether I'm charging too little. 

Without wanting to continue the discussion on the list, and without wanting
to give anything away, this discussion has helped me get closer to making my
mind up about this issue. 

Thanks.   This WSG list would be the most helpful list for my business I've
ever been on.


Cheers
Mike Kear
Windsor, NSW, Australia
AFP Webworks
http://afpwebworks.com


-Original Message-

> and this is why discussions about prices are usually taboo. 
> Not so much the giving away of trade secrets, but that 
> they're of *very* limited value to most everyone on a mailing 
> list such as this.
> 


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[WSG] OT: need help from a mac user please

[Michael Kear]

This is off topic so please respond off-list, but I need
some help from Mac users – I have a client who sees an error that I can’t
produce. 

 

When I go to http://nqpropertyreview.com
and click enter, I am presented with a login screen, which is what’s
required.  So are all of the 50 people so far that I’ve asked to
check it.    But the client doesn’t.  The client sees
an error message saying something like 

 

[quote]

Cannot decode string "",

The input string is not base-64
encoded

[/quote]

 

 

The only difference I can find between what I have and the
client, is that the client is using Mac with IE5.2.   I’d
really like some Mac users to take a look at the site and see if they get the
same error, to see if we can locate what’s causing the
problem.   The page validates so it’s nothing to do with the HTML..
The error is to do with the server side scripting in ColdFusion but the error
message doesn’t appear in the  ColdFusion documentation either.

 

If you do get the error, please cut and paste the whole
error message and send it to me

 

We now return you to our regular WSG programming. 
Thank you for your patience.

 

 

Cheers

Mike Kear

AFP Webworks

Windsor, NSW, Australia

http://afpwebworks.com

 

RE: [WSG] legal requirements for accessability

[Michael Kear]

There's a saying in the sales business (/me thinking back all those years to
when I was a sales trainer):Sell them what they want, and all the rest
comes along for free. 

If the customer loves the car's hot stereo, sell them the hot stereo and the
rest of the car comes along for free.

IF the house buyer falls in love with the kitchen, let them have the
kitchen, and the rest of the house comes along for free.

IF they want an accessible site, sell them an accessible site, and the good
design and easy navigation comes along for free.

If they want a web presence, sell them a web presence, and the accessible
design, good layout, easy navigation comes along for free.

SO it's your job when you first meet a prospective client to find out what
it is they want.  And what they need.  (Not necessarily the same things)
Then you sell them that.   When you build it, you build it as well as it's
possible to do, given your cost and time parameters.  Just because the
client wanted this and that and something else, without mentioning standards
compliance, doesn't mean you cant build a site like that.   When you get a
house built, you tell the builder you want this room, that cupboard, this
kind of roof, that kind of bathroom,  but he still builds structural
strength, water proofing, adequate foundations etc in even if you didn't
specify it in your requirements.


And as to cost, I've found that building to standards has REDUCED my time
(and therefore my cost) to build a site.  By forcing discipline on my html
code, and completely separating content and presentation, it's made many
things more simple.   And since the ongoing maintenance of the site is FAR
easier, it's going to make the cost of ownership of a site over the whole
life much lower than it would otherwise have been.It's my opinion that
if you are losing business because you are quoting on standards-compliant
sites, then you're doing it all wrong.   Standards compliance should give
you a competitive advantage over the other mugs who haven't learned about
standards yet.

Cheers
Mike Kear
Windsor, NSW, Australia
AFP Webworks
http://afpwebworks.com


-Original Message-
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On
Behalf Of Lachlan Hardy
Sent: Wednesday, 26 May 2004 5:57 PM
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: Re: [WSG] legal requirements for accessability

[snip]

So, please, folks, while we're here : How do you get your clients to care
about accessibility? Are you dealing with folks large enough that they
actually consider the chance that they might be sued, or do they actually
care if people can use their site?

The same goes for standards, actually. I understand the concept of just
doing it. And that's what I do. Until the client asks about such and such
and I let slip either of those cursed words : 'standards' or
'accessibility'.
"Whoa. Reign in there, fella! Who told you to go around doing things
like this? How much is that costing me?"

Every time I have quoted for a job by mentioning standards or accessibility,
my quote has been rejected. If I don't mention it in the quote and it comes
up later, I'm royally stuffed

I may be drifting off the thread here. Hell, I may have cut it! But I feel
the point is pertinent : my clients don't care about the legalities, and if
I try to push the point, they are no longer my client

So, how do the rest of you deal with this?


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RE: [WSG] Width difference in IE - OK in Firefox

[Michael Kear]

Title: Message








I found it!!!   Thanks for your
suggestion David, but that wasn’t it.  However it did prompt me to
go looking at the site where I got the original inspiration from (translation –
I went back ot the site I stole it from in the first place before I tinkered
with it beyond recognition to all but the original designer). 

 

The problem was the left margin setting
for the right hand sidebar.   It was set to 420px from the left, which
put that box too far to the right, and it was forcing  the right side of
the main container box out to the right in IE.  It just overlaid the edge
of that box in the other browsers, and since it was transparent, I didn’t
see it overlapping in NN and FF.   The solution:  reduce the
left margin on the sidebar to 410px and it was done. 

 

As a result I’ve learned this
lesson:   When you’re laying out the basic blocks for your
page, it’s a good idea to give each a different colour background, so you
can see just where all the boxes are falling, which ones are touching and which
aren’t.    When you have everything laid out how you want,
and floating in the right places, THEN change the background colours to white
or transparent or whatever your design calls for.   Using different
colour backgrounds is better than the technique I’ve been using up to now
(giving each a border of a different colour) because borders take up
space.   Background colours don't take up horizontal or vertical
space, so therefore don't affect the way the boxes float and/or line up against
each other.

 

Cheers

Mike Kear

Windsor, NSW, Australia

AFP Webworks

http://afpwebworks.com



 

 

From:
[EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of David McDonald
Sent: Monday, 24 May 2004 11:53 PM
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: RE: [WSG] Width
difference in IE - OK in Firefox



 



Try using display:inline on the floated
element in question.





 





It's most probably one of the IE bugs
listed here:





 





http://www.positioniseverything.net/explorer.html





 





 



 



Regards,

David McDonald
Web Designer

http://www.davidmcdonald.org

Southbank, Melbourne
Australia

[WSG] Width difference in IE - OK in Firefox

[Michael Kear]

I’m stumped at what I’ve done wrong here. 
I’ve copied (or at least I THOUGHT I copied!) a structure from another site
that worked, but it’s playing out wrong for IE6.  can anyone tell me
what I’m doing wrong here please?

 

The site’s at http://paraklesis.com.au
 and the style sheet is at http://paraklesis.com.au/styles/paraklesis.css
 

 

It looks fine in Firefox, and Netscape 7.1  but not in
IE6.    

 

What’s happening in IE is that the outer container is too
wide on the right (it’s supposed to be 597pixels wide, which is the width
of the heading graphic).  It’s 597 in the other browsers, but in IE
it’s 614px wide.    And despite being wider, it still
squeezes the right sidebar out and forces it to float below the left content
box.    I’ve been staring at this wretched thing for hours
now and I guess I’m too close to it now to see what’s wrong. 

 

Can anyone see what I’ve done?  

 

 

(oh yes, I know the content is far too long and the client
has lots of work to do in that area and I have some work to do on the floats
for the menu buttons.  But it’s the bigger boxes I’m working
on now.).

 

 

Cheers

Mike Kear

AFP Webworks

Windsor, NSW, Australia

http://afpwebworks.com

 

RE: [WSG] WSG Redesign Closed

[Michael Kear]

Well I for one thought it was a worthwhile project, and a good thing to try.

I didn't submit a design because I don't put myself in the same class as
many of the others on this list.  I wouldn't want to have my design work
judged alongside professional designers.   Now if you're talking about code
and functionality and stuff, well my professional reputation will put me in
the running I reckon, but not design skills.  I'm here on this list as a
learner, and I'm learning as fast as I can. 

But able to contribute a classy design as the showcase of this group?  Not
me.  Couldn't do it.   And specially not using the CSS/Accessibility
techniques we're all learning.

I'd venture to suggest there were quite a few of the members of this list
who were in the same category as me.   The impression I have is that there
aren't all that many of the 600 list members who'd say they were fully
conversant with all the techniques advocated by this group.

Don't regard the response as lack of interest.  Call it lack of expertise on
the part of the list members with techniques that while familiar to you, are
new and revolutionary to most of the web development world.


Cheers
Mike Kear
Windsor, NSW, Australia
AFP Webworks
http://afpwebworks.com



-Original Message-
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On
Behalf Of Peter Firminger
Sent: Saturday, 22 May 2004 2:29 PM
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: [WSG] WSG Redesign Closed

Hi Members,

Voting has now closed for the WSG design competition. For your information,
here are the top 3 results:

Voting (total 144 votes):
69 votes (47.9%) - Russ Weakley
35 votes (24.3%) - Current Site
17 votes (11.8%) - Lindsay Evans

Rating (sum of points awarded -2 to 2):
154 - Russ Weakley
61 - Lindsay Evans
39 - Current Site


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RE: [WSG] Lines on top - anyone see why?

[Michael Kear]

Thanks for the idea, Martin.  That did the trick, although not in the
#heading selector, but in the dl selector, which is the object that contains
all those floated elements.   The #heading is only the top component of the
floated box.

Thanks a lot, it's been niggling away at me for ages, that one. 

Cheers
Mike Kear
Windsor, NSW, Australia
AFP Webworks
http://afpwebworks.com


-Original Message-
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On
Behalf Of martin janner
Sent: Wednesday, 19 May 2004 3:51 PM
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: Re: [WSG] Lines on top - anyone see why?

Michael Kear skrev:

 > Thanks anyway.  I guess no one has any ideas how I can make the lines 
 > go underneath the floated box on my page in IE.


Try position:relative; on the floated box(#heading)

/ m a r t i n


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RE: [WSG] Lines on top - anyone see why?

[Michael Kear]

Thanks anyway.  I guess no one has any ideas how I can make the lines go
underneath the floated box on my page in IE. 

I don't suppose it's impossible? Surely not.

I can't use percentages in the float because it has to be fixed 130px width,
because of the graphics creating the round corners.

I guess I'll have to tell the client that the design isn't possible and
we'll have to change it.

Pity.  First time I've asked a question here and had no answers except one
that I can't use. 


Cheers
Mike Kear
Windsor, NSW, Australia
AFP Webworks
http://afpwebworks.com



-Original Message-
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On
Behalf Of [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Sent: Wednesday, 19 May 2004 8:48 AM
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: Re: [WSG] Lines on top - anyone see why?

Internet Explorer sucks at rendering floats correctly. It looks fine in
Mozilla/Firefox.



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RE: [WSG] Lines on top - anyone see why?

[Michael Kear]

I should have been a little more specific.  Sorry .   It looks fine in
Firefox to me too.   However the client looks at his site in IE6, and that's
where the problem manifests itself. 



Cheers
Mike Kear
Windsor, NSW, Australia
AFP Webworks
http://afpwebworks.com





-Original Message-
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On
Behalf Of [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Sent: Wednesday, 19 May 2004 8:48 AM
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: Re: [WSG] Lines on top - anyone see why?

Internet Explorer sucks at rendering floats correctly. It looks fine in
Mozilla/Firefox.



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