Re: [WSG] IE 7.0 "Details Begin to Leak"

[Ryan Christie]

Let the rain of hellfire begin! Though in the past, all they do is weave 
more deceit and under-deliver on release. I read that "MS decides to 
introduce more bugs into IE7, and fix none from IE6". Joy.

Nick Lo wrote:
"Partner sources say Microsoft is wavering on the extent to which it 
plans to support CSS2 with IE 7.0. Developers have been clamoring for 
Microsoft to update its CSS support to support the latest W3C 
standards for years. But Microsoft is leaning toward adding some 
additional CSS2 support to IE 7.0, but not embracing the standard in 
its entirety, partners say."
**
The discussion list for  http://webstandardsgroup.org/
See http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm
for some hints on posting to the list & getting help
**

[WSG] List item background disappears in IE6

[Ryan Christie]

On the site I'm currently working on, the link image for the farthest
right item ("Photo Albums") won't load in IE6, however the block
dimensions for the a tag still show up and don't seem to be reduced at
all.
The logo is a background for the "overlay" div, and is located beneath the
ul's container. The two divs overlap slightly, but I didn't think this
would cause a problem.
page: http://extrablack.com/test/psycsci/index.html
css: http://extrablack.com/test/psycsci/css/general.css
 http://extrablack.com/test/psycsci/css/ie5pluswin.css
What's causing this? Is there a better way to go about that layout than
what I've done?
-Ryan Christie
 [EMAIL PROTECTED]
**
The discussion list for  http://webstandardsgroup.org/
See http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm
for some hints on posting to the list & getting help
**

Re: [WSG] w3c badges

[Ryan Christie]

You're free to make your own W3C badges to place on your site. Most 
people I see, incl. myself, just use text links in the footer. W3C won't 
hunt you down for infringement or anything.

You're right though, if they had some quality official badges that 
didn't stick out like a sore thumb, I'd probably use them alot more 
often. :)

Rick Faaberg wrote:
Who can I send a suggestion to at W3C that they make their web badges a lot
more subtle (and smaller) so that I would actually use them on my sites?
Or do I just put up text that says "W3C Valid"? Is that what you do?
Or just forget it entirely, 'cause who beside developers care in the first
place?
Best,
Rick Faaberg
--
Ryan Christie| e: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Harrisonburg, VA | w: http://theward.net
**
The discussion list for  http://webstandardsgroup.org/
See http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm
for some hints on posting to the list & getting help
**

Re: [WSG] Vignette and web standards = disaster?

[Ryan Christie]

My experience with Vignette CMS has produced horribly non-standard code, 
regardless of the power behind the CMS itself. Vignette isn't popular 
because it does things right. Frankly, I just think it's popular because 
it costs an arm and leg to use, so hell -- it has to be good! right!?

;)
Ian Fenn wrote:
Hello,
Help!
I'm working on a major website and getting the problem Douglas Bowman
describes here:
http://www.stopdesign.com/log/2002/10/09/cms_troubles.html
Any anyone here faced this problem and been able to fix it?
Douglas clearly managed to - wired.com did indeed relaunch - but I'm
awaiting his reply. It has been a day or so and I'm up against a tight
deadline :-(
If anyone can shed light, I'd be enormously grateful.
All the best,
--
Ian Fenn
Chopstix Media
http://www.chopstixmedia.com/
**
The discussion list for  http://webstandardsgroup.org/
 See http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm
 for some hints on posting to the list & getting help
******


--
Ryan Christie| e: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Harrisonburg, VA | w: http://theward.net
**
The discussion list for  http://webstandardsgroup.org/
See http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm
for some hints on posting to the list & getting help
**

Re: [WSG] box model hack question

[Ryan Christie]

I'm getting a little confused with when to use the following hack:
width:760px;
\width:770px;
w\idth:760px
Is it something that should be used on every container/wrapper?  What
happens if I don't use it?  I've seen some CSS on sites that use it
everwhere and then others that don't...
Hi Helen.
I'm not too sure that's a valid hack itself, though it might work.
Width hacks like that are targeted at Internet Explorer, because of the 
incorrect way IE handles the CSS box model concerning borders and 
padding. You can read about (and view in action if you're browsing with 
IE) the IE box model bug at 
http://tantek.com/CSS/Examples/boxmodelhack.html ...

There's also a valid mehtod of using such a hack as well as explanation 
of under what circumstances to use it.

HTH!
--
Ryan Christie| e: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Harrisonburg, VA | w: http://extrablack.com (opening soon)
**
The discussion list for  http://webstandardsgroup.org/
See http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm
for some hints on posting to the list & getting help
**

Re: [WSG] about.com's Web standards article

[Ryan Christie]

Nothing wrong with using WYSIWYGs - so long as they are standards-compliant. I tell 
you what - if you can get our WYSIWYG to create non-standards compliant markup, we'll 
get you a Firefox t-shirt. Use the link below, this version will run in Firefox PR1:
http://xstandard.com/misc/beta/x-pro.exe
Aaron won't be getting a t-shirt :) I've tried in the past! X-Standard 
doesn't carry the stigma of a traditional WYSIWYG, but it is a visual 
editor.

Anyway, Jennifer Kyrnin is obviously a novice, hasn't researched the 
benfits outside her little world, and is probably an advisor for the 
MS/IE team ;)

--
Ryan Christie| e: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Harrisonburg, VA | w: http://extrablack.com (opening soon)
**
The discussion list for  http://webstandardsgroup.org/
See http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm
for some hints on posting to the list & getting help
**

Re: [WSG] WSG Melbourne: Meet Doug Bowman and Dave Shea

[Ryan Christie]

I really need to move to Australia. I know that if I manage to catch a 
plane there, I won't have enough money to make it back to the US anyway. 
Any Melbies who don't show for Shea and Bowman are insane!

afdesign wrote:
The WSG informal pub meetup scheduled for Monday October 4 has now been 
moved to Tuesday October 5.

This is becasue Dave Shea and Doug Bowman will be in Melbourne on 
Tuesday evening. The venue will likely be a pub from 6.30pm onwards but 
details are still being worked out.

For those in Melbourne that couldn't get to WE04, this is a great 
opportunity to get face to face contact with two extraordinary people.

WSG Co-Chairs Peter Firminger and Russ Weakley will also be flying down.
So Tuesday evening free and spread the word around to colleagues and 
other lists you may be on.

As with all are meetings here in Melbourne this is open to WSG members 
and non-members alike.

Keep posted to this page for more information:
http://webstandardsgroup.org/go/event19.cfm
**
The discussion list for  http://webstandardsgroup.org/
See http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm
for some hints on posting to the list & getting help
**


--
Ryan Christie| e: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Harrisonburg, VA | w: http://extrablack.com (opening soon)
**
The discussion list for  http://webstandardsgroup.org/
See http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm
for some hints on posting to the list & getting help
**

Re: [WSG] AOHell

[Ryan Christie]

AOL browser is uses the IE engine, does it not?
Ted Drake wrote:
In a developers meeting today I was asked about AOL, should we test with it... 

What do you do?  What considerations are there for AOl?
Ted
**
The discussion list for  http://webstandardsgroup.org/
Proud presenters of Web Essentials 04 http://we04.com/
 Web standards, accessibility, inspiration, knowledge
To be held in Sydney, September 30 and October 1, 2004
 See http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm
 for some hints on posting to the list & getting help
**


--
Ryan Christie| e: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Harrisonburg, VA | w: http://extrablack.com (opening soon)
**
The discussion list for  http://webstandardsgroup.org/
Proud presenters of Web Essentials 04 http://we04.com/
Web standards, accessibility, inspiration, knowledge
To be held in Sydney, September 30 and October 1, 2004
See http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm
for some hints on posting to the list & getting help
**

Re: [WSG] gBrowser from Google

[Ryan Christie]

Well, I did manage to get a warning from Google that "our service 
(GMail) may not look right because you aren't using IE" message, so the 
hopes of them NOT using IE as a backend? Slim. Corporations like Google 
are probably going to jump on ease of use and/or popularity.

Still, it'd be nice to have gecko running the show. It'll suck if 
gBrowser turns out to be some craptastic IE wrapper like CrazyBrowser. 
Oh, the numbers of people who refer to CrazyBrowser as an actual browser 
is frightening.

Don't these people wonder why it is that having IE6 installed is a 
requirement to run it's software?!

*palm to the forehead*
Webstandards wrote:
Hi everyone
I was recently told by a friend that there is talk of a browser to be 
released soon by Google called "gBrowser"

I have googled for any news on it, and what support for standards it may 
have, but haven't really heard much..

To keep on topic, has anyone heard whether it will follow standards at 
all?? Or will it do a Netscape and use Mozilla and add extras on top?

Their toolbar is IE only (a Mozilla version project at 
http://sourceforge.net/projects/google-toolbar/ has not moved in ages), 
so I am hoping they aren't going to base on IE

With the number of gmail accounts going about, I can only think what a 
few gmail plug-ins to a "gBrowser" can do, before nearly every desktop 
will have it installed.

Ralph
**
The discussion list for  http://webstandardsgroup.org/
Proud presenters of Web Essentials 04 http://we04.com/
Web standards, accessibility, inspiration, knowledge
To be held in Sydney, September 30 and October 1, 2004
See http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm
for some hints on posting to the list & getting help
**


--
Ryan Christie| e: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Harrisonburg, VA | w: http://extrablack.com (opening soon)
**
The discussion list for  http://webstandardsgroup.org/
Proud presenters of Web Essentials 04 http://we04.com/
Web standards, accessibility, inspiration, knowledge
To be held in Sydney, September 30 and October 1, 2004
See http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm
for some hints on posting to the list & getting help
**

Re: [WSG] Just for fun

[Ryan Christie]

> How does one acquire such stats, from the ISP or client-side utility?
I just use the find & replace method in Dreamweaver MX 2004 and count 
the instances of any given tag :) Probably not the best way to parse a 
HTML file, but It works.

Bert had mentioned there was a lot of DIVs, I'll just clarify:
I needed to use a couple extra to clear float instances in order for the 
site to appear correctly in Mac IE 5. If I changed the "hack" empty divs 
over to like hr tags, there would have been a few less.

Not counting the "container" div which makes up level one and keeps the 
site together, the rest of the DIV were necessary to produce the 
3-column layout, keeping the center content at the top of the page and 
the navigation second. There are also extra DIV to emulate the boxes 
down the middle column. It wasn't redesign, just some emulation.

Going back I could probably shave off some DIV here and there using 
spans or something instead, but the HTML underneath compartively to the 
original is quite readable. The nesting produced no load lag from any 
browsers. By far, not a perfect conversion, but not bad for a first and 
only pass at it.

Chris Kennon wrote:
Original "snapshot" : http://theward.net/examples/chiefs.htm
Revised: http://theward.net/examples/chiefstandards.htm
--
Ryan Christie| e: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Harrisonburg, VA | w: http://extrablack.com (opening soon)
**
The discussion list for  http://webstandardsgroup.org/
Proud presenters of Web Essentials 04 http://we04.com/
Web standards, accessibility, inspiration, knowledge
To be held in Sydney, September 30 and October 1, 2004
See http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm
for some hints on posting to the list & getting help
**

[WSG] Just for fun

[Ryan Christie]

I was taking requests to do a mock-up of a tables site into a CSS layout 
last week because the office was pretty slow all of Friday. I figured 
I'd share the outcome with the group.

Original Stats:
Tables: 31
Font Tags: 294
DIVs: 167
HTML size: 68.4kb
New Stats:
Tables: 3
Font Tags: 0
DIVs: 38
HTML size: 17.0kb
CSS size: 5.29kb
Original "snapshot" : http://theward.net/examples/chiefs.htm
Revised: http://theward.net/examples/chiefstandards.htm
There's a list that doesn't want to behave itself in IE, but other than 
that it came out alright. It was friendly in all the Mac and Win 
browsers I tested it in. Enjoy :)
**
The discussion list for  http://webstandardsgroup.org/

Proud presenters of Web Essentials 04 http://we04.com/
Web standards, accessibility, inspiration, knowledge
To be held in Sydney, September 30 and October 1, 2004
See http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm
for some hints on posting to the list & getting help
**

Re: [WSG] accessibility question: same link phrase more than once

[Ryan Christie]

To avoid this most people will include something specific to the post's 
title like Read more of "so and so" or whatnot.

That is just one of those WCAG rules that turns people off about WCAG 
rules. I just alter the title attribute's text to specify what post it's 
linking to. I believe that's what the rule should be. Part of the reason 
it exists to to stop people from telling you to click [a]here[/a]... The 
"click here" thing is just bad practice though :-P

Cameron Muir wrote:
I was just wondering the list's opinion about blogs and CMSs that at the 
end of each new item, have a link that says 'read more' or 'read 
comments' or just 'more' .

Sitepoint, for example, uses the same link phrase more than once when 
pointing to different URLS:

Do not use the same link phrase more than once when the links point to 
different URLs. 
/ (7 instances) /
*Line 141*: (reply...)
*Line 164*: (reply...)
*Line 180*: (reply...)
*Line 191*:   Posted @ 2:50:08 AM MDT - 4 comments -
*Line 192*: (reply...)
*Line 222*: (reply...)
*Line 234*: (reply...)

Nearly all CMSs and blogs do the same.
Has anyone come up with any solutions for this?
regards,
cameron.
**
The discussion list for  http://webstandardsgroup.org/
Proud presenters of Web Essentials 04 http://we04.com/
Web standards, accessibility, inspiration, knowledge
To be held in Sydney, September 30 and October 1, 2004
See http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm
for some hints on posting to the list & getting help
**


**
The discussion list for  http://webstandardsgroup.org/
Proud presenters of Web Essentials 04 http://we04.com/
Web standards, accessibility, inspiration, knowledge
To be held in Sydney, September 30 and October 1, 2004
See http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm
for some hints on posting to the list & getting help
**

Re: [WSG] css validation error

[Ryan Christie]

font: [italics/bold/etc] [size]/[line-height] ["two 
words"],[fam2],[fam3],[etc];

Kevin Futter wrote:
My understanding was that there shouldn't be a comma in the shorthand font
selector after "Trebuchet MS" (but I could be wrong ...).
Cheers,
Kevin Futter
On 20/9/04 4:26 PM, "John Oxton" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

Maybe you could try not using the font shorthand to get it to validate,
try it as font-family etc. Could it be that there is something missing
from that rule? Certainly one I have had problem with before.
Cameron Muir wrote:
Thanks for pointing that out John - serves me right for not cleaning out
disused styles.
However, I'm still getting the same error.
John Oxton wrote:

Hi Cameron,
You have this
.paymate {
   position: relative:
   top: 20px;
   right: 10px;
}
the position:relative needs a semi colon and you should be on your way
Regards,
John,
Cameron Muir wrote:

Hello,
I can't work out why this is producing an error. I'm sure there must
be a simple solution that I've missed.
body {
  font: small "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;
  color: #66;
}
The error:
URI : http://design.quagma.net/themes/quagma/style.css
  * Line: 0 Context : sans-serif
Parse Error - : Trebuchet MS
  * Line: 0 Context : sans-serif
Parse Error - sans-serif;
  * Line: 0 Context : sans-serif
Parse error - Unrecognized : { }
The site:
http://design.quagma.net
**
The discussion list for  http://webstandardsgroup.org/
Proud presenters of Web Essentials 04 http://we04.com/
Web standards, accessibility, inspiration, knowledge
To be held in Sydney, September 30 and October 1, 2004
See http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm
for some hints on posting to the list & getting help
**

**
The discussion list for  http://webstandardsgroup.org/
Proud presenters of Web Essentials 04 http://we04.com/
Web standards, accessibility, inspiration, knowledge
To be held in Sydney, September 30 and October 1, 2004
See http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm
for some hints on posting to the list & getting help
**


**
The discussion list for  http://webstandardsgroup.org/
Proud presenters of Web Essentials 04 http://we04.com/
Web standards, accessibility, inspiration, knowledge
To be held in Sydney, September 30 and October 1, 2004
See http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm
for some hints on posting to the list & getting help
**

**
The discussion list for  http://webstandardsgroup.org/
Proud presenters of Web Essentials 04 http://we04.com/
Web standards, accessibility, inspiration, knowledge
To be held in Sydney, September 30 and October 1, 2004
See http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm
for some hints on posting to the list & getting help
**



**
The discussion list for  http://webstandardsgroup.org/
Proud presenters of Web Essentials 04 http://we04.com/
 Web standards, accessibility, inspiration, knowledge
To be held in Sydney, September 30 and October 1, 2004
 See http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm
 for some hints on posting to the list & getting help
**


**
The discussion list for  http://webstandardsgroup.org/
Proud presenters of Web Essentials 04 http://we04.com/
Web standards, accessibility, inspiration, knowledge
To be held in Sydney, September 30 and October 1, 2004
See http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm
for some hints on posting to the list & getting help
**

Re: [WSG] New website launch

[Ryan Christie]

This seems weird to me as the layout uses a fixed width centred div of
700px and html has min-width:700px specified + there's an extra
div#mozscroll which is also 700px so the browser really ought to add
scrollbars when its width falls below 700px ... or am I
misinterpreting min-width? Any ideas anyone?
James
That wort of seems like beating a dead horse right there. If something 
has width:700px;, declaring min-width:700px; defeats the purpose. 
min-width is the maximum allowed shrinkage a site will allow with a 
resized browser window *before* it will not shrink further and adds in 
scrollbars. To be effwctive in this case, the min-width would need to be 
a smaller value than 700px.

As for div#mozscroll, it doesn't sound absolutely necessary to be there.
**
The discussion list for  http://webstandardsgroup.org/
Proud presenters of Web Essentials 04 http://we04.com/
Web standards, accessibility, inspiration, knowledge
To be held in Sydney, September 30 and October 1, 2004
See http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm
for some hints on posting to the list & getting help
**

Re: [WSG] css validation error

[Ryan Christie]

I just checked out your CSS file, and it validates now. Whatever you did 
to fix it worked :)

Just to touch base on that font shorthand:
font: [italics/bold/etc] [size]/[line-height] ["family 
1"],[fam2],[fam3],[etc];

I haven't experiemented with what can be left in/out and still having it 
validate, but i would imagine any element as long as they appear in the 
correct order.

John Oxton wrote:
Maybe you could try not using the font shorthand to get it to validate, 
try it as font-family etc. Could it be that there is something missing 
from that rule? Certainly one I have had problem with before.

Cameron Muir wrote:
Thanks for pointing that out John - serves me right for not cleaning 
out disused styles.

However, I'm still getting the same error.
John Oxton wrote:
Hi Cameron,
You have this
.paymate {
position: relative:
top: 20px;
right: 10px;
}
the position:relative needs a semi colon and you should be on your way
Regards,
John,
Cameron Muir wrote:
Hello,
I can't work out why this is producing an error. I'm sure there must 
be a simple solution that I've missed.

body {
   font: small "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;
   color: #66;
}
The error:
 URI : http://design.quagma.net/themes/quagma/style.css
   * Line: 0 Context : sans-serif
 Parse Error - : Trebuchet MS
   * Line: 0 Context : sans-serif
 Parse Error - sans-serif;
   * Line: 0 Context : sans-serif
 Parse error - Unrecognized : { }
The site:
http://design.quagma.net
**
The discussion list for  http://webstandardsgroup.org/
Proud presenters of Web Essentials 04 http://we04.com/
Web standards, accessibility, inspiration, knowledge
To be held in Sydney, September 30 and October 1, 2004
See http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm
for some hints on posting to the list & getting help
**

**
The discussion list for  http://webstandardsgroup.org/
Proud presenters of Web Essentials 04 http://we04.com/
Web standards, accessibility, inspiration, knowledge
To be held in Sydney, September 30 and October 1, 2004
See http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm
for some hints on posting to the list & getting help
**


**
The discussion list for  http://webstandardsgroup.org/
Proud presenters of Web Essentials 04 http://we04.com/
Web standards, accessibility, inspiration, knowledge
To be held in Sydney, September 30 and October 1, 2004
See http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm
for some hints on posting to the list & getting help
**

**
The discussion list for  http://webstandardsgroup.org/
Proud presenters of Web Essentials 04 http://we04.com/
Web standards, accessibility, inspiration, knowledge
To be held in Sydney, September 30 and October 1, 2004
See http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm
for some hints on posting to the list & getting help
**


**
The discussion list for  http://webstandardsgroup.org/
Proud presenters of Web Essentials 04 http://we04.com/
Web standards, accessibility, inspiration, knowledge
To be held in Sydney, September 30 and October 1, 2004
See http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm
for some hints on posting to the list & getting help
**

Re: [WSG] FireFox - Built In CSS Error Handler?

[Ryan Christie]

Aww thanks.
I must not be using the DOM inspector properly since I have never seen 
any CSS or any CSS errors displayed inside there...
How do you view the CSS of an item?
Mine just shows the text and blinks a border around it etc...

The DOM inspector doesn't validate stuff. Not sure about how it will 
display CSS errors either. To see the stuff though..

When you click on something and the border blinks, you click on the icon 
next to where it says "Object - DOM mode" -- that will bring up a list 
of possible data displays. Play around with it.

Ryan Christie
**
The discussion list for  http://webstandardsgroup.org/
Proud presenters of Web Essentials 04 http://we04.com/
Web standards, accessibility, inspiration, knowledge
To be held in Sydney, September 30 and October 1, 2004
See http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm
for some hints on posting to the list & getting help
**

Re: [WSG] Sliding doors and Mac IE5.2

[Ryan Christie]

I'm not sure if this is on or off topic. If it's off topic my apologies.
I'm using the ALA tab menu (sliding doors) as my main nav. Now I've been 
told that it breaks in Mac/IE5 into something like this... left tab img 
- the link - right tab img. Is it possible to get it right in Mac/IE5.2?
Hey, I think your site looks great Kim :)
One thing though - the clickable/rollover area on your top tabs only 
occurs over the text, which feels a little weird. The side links are 
fine; the whole block is clickable. You should fix the top ones mate :)

(i think a {display:block; width:100%;} on the [a] tags there should do 
the trick.)

Ryan Christie
**
The discussion list for  http://webstandardsgroup.org/
Proud presenters of Web Essentials 04 http://we04.com/
Web standards, accessibility, inspiration, knowledge
To be held in Sydney, September 30 and October 1, 2004
See http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm
for some hints on posting to the list & getting help
**

Re: [WSG] Microsoft going to improve Internet Explorer?

[Ryan Christie]

Phillips, Wendy wrote:
http://blogs.msdn.com/dmassy/archive/2004/06/16/157263.aspx
 

SOSDD Wendy. This horse is already bloody, mutilated, and decomposing on 
the battlefield.

After the explosion on Channel9 forums, it irks me that Dave Massy and 
Tony Chor still gawk at the vague requests
when they have an ample amount of specifics from the community. Big 
improvement, probably not. At the rate the
IE team moves, we'll be lucky if they even get anything right with CSS 
in their Longhorn release.

Very disappointed in them.
--
Ryan Christie| e: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Harrisonburg, VA | w: http://shadyland.theward.net
---() ()--
*
The discussion list for http://webstandardsgroup.org/
See http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm
for some hints on posting to the list & getting help
* 

Re: [WSG] Interesting reading

[Ryan Christie]

Well, I'm with Mike Kear on this one one hundred percent...
" Agreeing on standards is like McDonald's and Burger King agreeing to 
have the same type of french fry recipe. Where is the secret sauce that 
makes you want to go their restaurant? And where is the reason why I 
should use one browser over another? If all browsers are going to be the 
same, why should anyone make or even support another browser in the 
first place?"

No matter how you slice, fry, or bake a french fry, the thing is still a 
potato at it's most basic level. Flashiness is fine, as long as all 
browsers stem off the same, basic principals. Hello? Standards?

This is definitely a person whose words I wouldn't take into any real 
consideration now or in the future.

--
Ryan Christie| e: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Harrisonburg, VA | w: http://shadyland.theward.net
---() ()--
*
The discussion list for http://webstandardsgroup.org/
See http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm
for some hints on posting to the list & getting help
* 

Re: [WSG] Thanks for Div/Float Help

[Ryan Christie]

Rosie Norwood wrote:
Thank you to Michael and Andrew for your help on the float. Everything 
works beautifully now and I am sucking up the new knowledge.

Rosie Norwood
 

Please send "thank-you" emails offlist directly to the people you are 
thanking.

--
Ryan Christie| e: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Harrisonburg, VA | w: http://shadyland.theward.net
---() ()--
*
The discussion list for http://webstandardsgroup.org/
See http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm
for some hints on posting to the list & getting help
* 

[WSG] Unordered list problem on IE5.2Mac

[Ryan Christie]

Hi list :)
I've got every other quirk squashed except this unordered list one.
Is there a way to reposition the unordered list while keeping the square 
bullets where they're supposed to be, or will I have to fake this
with a background image? I've gotten the text to move where it's 
supposed to be, but the bullets don't seem to care.

The ul is inside a div, and the div is positioned. I thought maybe that 
would do the trick instead of repo the ul, but nope.

page: http://www.theward.net/jmuweb/retool/index.html>
css: http://www.theward.net/jmuweb/retool/stylesheet.css>
=/  optional  /==
Comments on the site welcome. I'm not the designer, I just chop up the 
Photoshop files and program it.

The other page the designer has given me is the 2nd level template ~
page: http://www.theward.net/jmuweb/level2/index.html>
page: http://www.theward.net/jmuweb/level2/stylesheet.css>
thanks!
--
Ryan Christie| e: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Harrisonburg, VA | w: http://shadyland.theward.net
---() ()--
*
The discussion list for http://webstandardsgroup.org/
See http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm
for some hints on posting to the list & getting help
* 

Re: [WSG] Help with IE 6

[Ryan Christie]

Amit Karmakar wrote:
 
The site: http://www.maysvillerotary.org
CSS: http://www.maysvillerotary.org/assets/styles/maysvillerotary.css

It's pretty late over here, and I only brushed over the stuff but
#navcontainer
{
float: left;
width: 199px;
border-right: 1px solid #B4D3DC;
padding: 0 0 1em 0;
margin-bottom: 1em;
font-family: Verdana, Lucida, Geneva, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif;
/*background-color: #99;*/
background: #C7E4E6;
color: #333;
}
I think your problem has a bit to do with the box model manhandling of IE6's engine. 
When you're using
specified witdths in your CSS, be careful about also specifying the padding -- it'll 
break lots of stuff
in IE. Can get around with Tantek's V-F hack 
(http://www.tantek.com/CSS/Examples/boxmodelhack.html) or
just avoid using width+padding in block elements.
under #navigation li a, I don't think you should need a width:100% .. li will fill up 
the space they reside
in horizontally unless limited by a max-width/width.
--
Ryan Christie| e: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Harrisonburg, VA | w: http://shadyland.theward.net
---() ()--
*
The discussion list for http://webstandardsgroup.org/
See http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm
for some hints on posting to the list & getting help
* 

Re: [WSG] CSS Disaster

[Ryan Christie]

Almost all of my visitors use IE, and I have less than two weeks to 
solve the problem.

CSS is an excellent car, but IE is a broken muddy pothole-filled road.
Anyone know any bugs that prevent IE from loading a stylesheet? 
You provided no URLs. Nada. Zilch. Nein.
Sorry, no can help.
--
Ryan Christie| e: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Harrisonburg, VA | w: http://shadyland.theward.net
---() ()--
*
The discussion list for http://webstandardsgroup.org/
See http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm
for some hints on posting to the list & getting help
* 

Re: [WSG] Correct way to swap style sheets based on Browser?

[Ryan Christie]

What I would like to do is, limit the browsers that see the fully styled
version of my site to the ones I know work correctly others will get the
un-styled version.
I am aware I can do this in JavaScript, is there a way to do so in CSS?
Logically I want to say:
If (ie4,5,5.5,6+, NN6, 7+ , Opera7+, Mozilla 0+ etc ){ use this style sheet
}
Elseif (NN4.7) {use this style sheet} 
Else { don’t use style sheet}

 

It appears to me that you have pretty much every modern browser we deal 
with day-to-day in your "allowance" section there.
I wouldn't recommend the use of JavaScript for browser-sniffing. This is 
a practice best left back in the dark ages of web design with Netscrape 
and IE proprietry page methods.

Since in NN4 you will (presumably? yoiu didn't specify) be using the 
same HTML as you would for the others, you'll only want to feed NN4 what 
it can understand and hide the rest from it. There is a technique that 
works very well.

Make 2 stylesheets - name one basic, and name the other modern.
Style commands that NN4 can understand/handle without 
crashing/misbehaving go in the basic CSS file.
All other styles are placed into modern.

at the top of basic, import modern -- @import url(modern.css);
NN4 is unable to use the @import function, and so it will not see the 
style information you have placed into modern.
In your HTML heads, use 

There is not really an option to say "Else, don't use the 
stylesheets"... NN4 CSS support is extremely rudimentary. Generally, I 
wouldn't worry about dealing with any other browsers. However, I notice 
that you haven't included on your list IE5.2 Mac or Safari, etc. and 
that all those listed are on the Windows platform. If you are thinking 
of blocking out the styling of your pages on these other-platformed 
browsers, I would discourage it. You should be able to offer some level 
of styling to Mac as well as Linux with little trouble. Browsers on 
these platforms (minus IE5.x OS8/9/X) aren't too troublesome to cater to.

On a side note, another post up, developing in IE6 or FF
http://shadyland.theward.net/archives/2004/05/development_ie6_1.php>
--
Ryan Christie| e: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Harrisonburg, VA | w: http://shadyland.theward.net
---() ()--
*
The discussion list for http://webstandardsgroup.org/
See http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm
for some hints on posting to the list & getting help
* 

Re: [WSG] "An Objective Look at Table Based vs. CSS Based Design"

[Ryan Christie]

I think it was Michelangelo (though it might have been daVinci) who 
said regarding sculpture, that the statue was already in the stone--he 
merely removed the excess.
I'm pretty sure it was Michaelangelo Mord.
--
Ryan Christie| e: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Harrisonburg, VA | w: http://shadyland.theward.net
---() ()--
*
The discussion list for http://webstandardsgroup.org/
See http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm
for some hints on posting to the list & getting help
* 

Re: [WSG] Nested lists, CSS, and Firefox

[Ryan Christie]

Sean Sullivan-Daley wrote:
Ok Here's another one.
Can you style nested lists in Firefox like the example below?
Example: #subnav li ul li { }
This seems to work in IE 6 but I can't get it to work in Firefox or Safari. Is there a 
work around for this or am I once again overlooking something.
I read Styling Nested Lists - 
http://www.simplebits.com/archives/2003/10/19/styling_nested_lists.html but I couldn't 
get that to work in Firefox either.
Here is an example. It works how I would like it to in IE but not in Firefox.
http://sean.ashtonweb.com/test/test.html
Thanks, 

-Sean
 

You have one validation error:  your 2nd level navigational list isn't 
within a  from the previous list. a  cannot come directly 
beneath another  tag. In any case, it works now. When you fix the 
validation error, just insert li selectors into the css file where needed.

http://www.theward.net/test2.html>
--
Ryan Christie| e: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Harrisonburg, VA | w: http://shadyland.theward.net
---() ()--
*
The discussion list for http://webstandardsgroup.org/
See http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm
for some hints on posting to the list & getting help
* 

Re: [WSG] Help with positioning

[Ryan Christie]

Sean Sullivan-Daley wrote:
OK I guess I need to re-state my problem. I Have a fixed amount of space (55px) at the 
top of my page. I need to have my navigation anchored to the bottom of that 55px 
space. What I have is 2 divs nested in another div. The top div is for info on who is 
logged in the bottom div has another div(topnav) for navigation.
My problem is getting the navigation to be anchored to the bottom of its container. I 
can get it to work for one browser but not the other.
Any suggestions?
http://sean.ashtonweb.com/test/top.html
Thanks, 

-Sean
 

Not sure if this was what you were looking for, but here's my take on 
what you intended:

http://www.theward.net/test.html>
--
Ryan Christie| e: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Harrisonburg, VA | w: http://shadyland.theward.net
---() ()--
*
The discussion list for http://webstandardsgroup.org/
See http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm
for some hints on posting to the list & getting help
* 

Re: [WSG] Printing problem

[Ryan Christie]

Giles Clark wrote:
I'm having a problem with printing web pages which I have put together with
CSS. I have done this before and have never had a problem. The pages render
OK in IE but when you hit the print button IE closes and restarts.
For the life of me I can't spot the problem..I've even wrapped the style
sheet in an @media all{} tag. Anyone else come across this problem before or
have any suggestions?
the site is http://www.douglaspartnership.com
any thoughts much appreciated.
regards
Giles
 

Tried printing in IE6 Win, no problems here. Which version/platform of 
IE is crashing and restarting?

--
Ryan Christie| e: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Harrisonburg, VA | w: http://shadyland.theward.net
---() ()--
*
The discussion list for http://webstandardsgroup.org/
See http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm
for some hints on posting to the list & getting help
* 

Re: [WSG] Clear Styles?

[Ryan Christie]

Chris Stratford wrote:
I dont know, but is there a way to hide all styles from a 
what I have is - an admin page, where the owner can enter text into a 

And click PREVIEW
and it will load it into a DIV below the TEXTAREA.

I dont want any of the styles to "cascade" down into this area...
Is there anyway to stop that from happening?
I think i explined it very "crappily" and i hope you understand what I 
am after...
* The discussion 
list for http://webstandardsgroup.org/ See 
http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm for some hints on 
posting to the list & getting help 
* 
if you're talking about inheritence, then follow the laws of the cascade.

Default text



form#bigBrother {color:red; border:2px dotted #000;}
#bigBrother div#littleBrother {color:blue; border:0;}
specifics take precedence over the cascade. You'll just need to 
annul/alter what's already there.

--
Ryan Christie| e: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Harrisonburg, VA | w: http://shadyland.theward.net
---() ()--
*
The discussion list for http://webstandardsgroup.org/
See http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm
for some hints on posting to the list & getting help
* 

Re: [WSG] Styled not picked up by FF

[Ryan Christie]

Kim Kruse wrote:
Hi,
 
I've one small problem with this page http://www.pagemakers.dk/divtest/ 
 
Is the padding on the #content is not being picked up by FF... or is 
it something else preventing FF from moving the #content text down? 
The CSS is here  http://www.pagemakers.dk/divtest/mouseriders.css
 
Thank you
Kim
I think you have a typo in your CSS file --
.content overskrift {
should probably read
#content .overskrift {
As for what causing the top padding to not show up in Fox, I've not a clue =/
--
Ryan Christie| e: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Harrisonburg, VA | w: http://shadyland.theward.net
---() ()--
*
The discussion list for http://webstandardsgroup.org/
See http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm
for some hints on posting to the list & getting help
* 

Re: [WSG] should I track down this problem?

[Ryan Christie]

Philippe:
If the user is still on OS 9, chances are that they use IE - not much 
choice in browsers there (Opera 6 or older Mozilla, both run poorly).

On top of my head, based on your description:
position relative on that navigation ul (IE 5/OS 9 is more sensitive 
to that).
un-cleared floats
float lacking a width declaration.

Send a url for more accurate diagnosis.
I agree, it is sometimes difficult to check older browsers - I'm now 
lacking a convenient way to check IE 5 Win, since a neighbour had the 
stupid idea of buying a new computer recently.
http://shadyland.theward.net/downloads/
grab the top file. Unzip to whatever directory, and then run. It's a 
pre-packaged version of Windows IE5 and 5.5 for WinXP running alongside 
IE6. All it is is the results of what you get when following the 
same-machine IE guide from insert-title.com. HTH

--
Ryan Christie| e: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Harrisonburg, VA | w: http://shadyland.theward.net
---() ()--
*
The discussion list for http://webstandardsgroup.org/
See http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm
for some hints on posting to the list & getting help
* 

Re: [WSG] W3C Validater doesn't recognize XHTML

[Ryan Christie]

I assume you're using PHP Mordechai? If so, copy&paste this -- based off 
Simon's script but altered for 1.1 DTD instead of 1.0Tran, with added 
sniffing::

$charset = "iso-8859-1";
$mime = "text/html";
function fix_code($buffer) {
return (preg_replace("!\s*/>!", ">", $buffer));
}
if(stristr($_SERVER["HTTP_ACCEPT"],"application/xhtml+xml")||
   stristr($_SERVER["HTTP_USER_AGENT"],"Opera/6")||
   stristr($_SERVER["HTTP_USER_AGENT"],"Opera/7")||
   stristr($_SERVER["HTTP_USER_AGENT"],"WDG_Validator")||
   stristr($_SERVER["HTTP_USER_AGENT"],"W3C_Validator")||
   stristr($_SERVER["HTTP_USER_AGENT"],"W3C_CSS_Validator")
) {
   
if(preg_match("/application\/xhtml\+xml;q=0(\.[1-9]+)/i",$_SERVER["HTTP_ACCEPT"],$matches)) 
{
   $xhtml_q = $matches[1];
   
if(preg_match("/text\/html;q=0(\.[1-9]+)/i",$_SERVER["HTTP_ACCEPT"],$matches)) 
{
   $html_q = $matches[1];
   if($xhtml_q >= $html_q) {
   $mime = "application/xhtml+xml";
   }
   }
   } else {
  $mime = "application/xhtml+xml";
   }
}
if($mime == "application/xhtml+xml") {
   $prolog_type = "\nhttp://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml11/DTD/xhtml11.dtd\";>\nhttp://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml\"; xml:lang=\"en\">\n";
} else {
   ob_start("fix_code");
   $prolog_type = "http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/loose.dtd\";>\n\n";
}
header("Content-Type: $mime;charset=$charset");
header("Vary: Accept");
print $prolog_type;
?>

--
Ryan Christie| e: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Harrisonburg, VA | w: http://shadyland.theward.net
---() ()--
*
The discussion list for http://webstandardsgroup.org/
See http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm
for some hints on posting to the list & getting help
* 

Re: [WSG] WSG design competition voting time

[Ryan Christie]

Now I see how few entries came in I'm thinking I should have somehow 
found the time to enter
Same here. I just wasn't in the mood to find the time to have my pants 
beaten off by the other 300 talented designers on this list. I think 
next time we should keep a number of submissions count. I knew the 
number was low, but 5? Not *that* low. Good luck to the fab 5 :)

--
Ryan Christie| e: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Harrisonburg, VA | w: http://shadyland.theward.net
---() ()--
*
The discussion list for http://webstandardsgroup.org/
See http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm
for some hints on posting to the list & getting help
* 

[WSG] Using XHTML 1.1

[Ryan Christie]

Just wrote an article addressing XHTML 1.1 and wanted some feedbacks.
My site just changed URLs and direction, so my current readership is 
somewhere around zero. :)

Please just leave comments on-site. Don't want to clog the list with a 
self-promo.

--
Ryan Christie| e: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Harrisonburg, VA | w: http://shadyland.theward.net
---() ()--
*
The discussion list for http://webstandardsgroup.org/
See http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm
for some hints on posting to the list & getting help
* 

Re: [WSG] Tables are bad because...

[Ryan Christie]

Go to Andy's article, and try replacing the words "table" and "table 
layout" with "font tag".

Works a treat,
Good observation :) I think it works with "image map" as well

--Ryan Christie
*
The discussion list for http://webstandardsgroup.org/
See http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm
for some hints on posting to the list & getting help
* 

Re: [WSG] Is a degree necessary? THREAD CLOSED - Open it back up! Please.

[Ryan Christie]

Active discussions get their head lopped off when they don't have 
anything to do with standards. This particular thread covered the value 
of a university degree in the web design business... had it have been 
"the lack of decent web design instruction in major universities", it 
would have carried on longer.

sad, sad story it is.

--Ryan Christie

theGrafixGuy wrote:

Why do the active threads get killed? Some one asks a decent question and
gets some very valid input only to get killed off???
Just because something may not be of interest to the particular moderator on
duty, I'd like to see a little consideration out there as well - if it is
producing some interesting conversation and something worth reading and
apparently of enough interest to readers to reply, why not let it continue?
Heck, if I were the moderator, I'd be more inclined to jump on the Out of
Office setters who don't know their e-mail from the end of their nose.
My two cents worth on the matter - and no I am not trying to be
disrespectful, just hoping to see some more interesting topics and e-mails
than 23 in a 20 hour period!
Brian Grimmer

theGrafixGuy

-Original Message-
From: Peter Firminger [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] 
Sent: Thursday, May 13, 2004 5:56 AM
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: RE: [WSG] Is a degree necessary? THREAD CLOSED

Russ already stopped this thread. Please do not continue with it on list.

P

*
The discussion list for http://webstandardsgroup.org/
See http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm
for some hints on posting to the list & getting help
* 



*
The discussion list for http://webstandardsgroup.org/
See http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm
for some hints on posting to the list & getting help
* 
 

*
The discussion list for http://webstandardsgroup.org/
See http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm
for some hints on posting to the list & getting help
* 

Re: [WSG] JS Percentages?

[Ryan Christie]

YoYoEtc wrote:

And if some users do indeed disable it, what sort of code do you put 
it as an alternative to get the site to do what you want it to do?
Server-side languages such as PHP or ASP. JS is a client language 
because it's dependant on a user's browser to supply the processing 
power for whatever facet, most commonly the ability to process 
JavaScript or X/HTML. Some may not understand the nature of a 
server-side, so here is an explanation.

Say you want to output the result from a calculation. The calculation 
could be, for instance, adding two and two together.

If it is written in JavaScript, the page will be sent out containing the 
yet-to-be-run JavaScript code asking the user's browser to call up its 
JS powers, process the code, and display the answer "4".

If it is written in PHP, when the browser makes a call to the server to 
pick up a copy of your web page, the web server your files reside on 
will take the page and process it before sending out any data to the 
user's browser. After being computed, the page will be sent out to the 
user with the answer in place.

If you open up a page that has been processed using PHP or ASP, you will 
not see any indications that a script was previously running. You will 
simply see, for example, a paragrpah containing the number 4 below a 
previously unsolved equation.

Due to taking the processing responsibility off your user's browser and 
placing it on the server, universal computation is ensured since patrons 
are fed the end results in HTML.

PS thanks Mario for the statistics

-Ryan
*
The discussion list for http://webstandardsgroup.org/
See http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm
for some hints on posting to the list & getting help
* 

Re: [WSG] Forms, labels & headers

[Ryan Christie]

I seriously just have to add, those toons are priceless :) excellent 
resource Manuel!

-Ryan

Manuel González Noriega wrote:

El dom, 09-05-2004 a las 05:56, Bert Doorn escribió:

 

Really, what is the practical (as opposed to philosophical) difference
between the two methods? 
   

Hi Bert,

are you asking why using tables for layout is stupid? :-)

http://www.hotdesign.com/seybold/

 

*
The discussion list for http://webstandardsgroup.org/
See http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm
for some hints on posting to the list & getting help
* 

[WSG] JS Percentages?

[Ryan Christie]

I wouldn't trust JS as far as I could throw it (can you throw code?) ... 
but is there a statistic on how many users actually disable it in their 
browsers? Is it possible to sniff that out, and if so, how many users 
per group are we talking about?

-Ryan
*
The discussion list for http://webstandardsgroup.org/
See http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm
for some hints on posting to the list & getting help
* 

Re: [WSG] reply from ACA

[Ryan Christie]

Damn man... I haven't laughed so hard in quite awhile.
For christsake -- someone please get the Australian .gov's to validate 
proper.
There's an army of you guys over there. Makes me want to pack my bags 
and jet :)

(and, I loved this guy's grammar and spelling.)

-Ryan

Neerav wrote:

The following line from the ACA's source code explains most of the 
problem:


and the less said about their "accessible sitemap" at 
http://www.aca.gov.au/help/sitemap.htm (a mess of table cells and font 
tags) the better

*
The discussion list for http://webstandardsgroup.org/
See http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm
for some hints on posting to the list & getting help
* 

Re: [WSG] First Post - Help with Graphic on Home Page

[Ryan Christie]

Re designing for 800x 600 or 1024x768, I think I will do that.  From 
what I am reading, stretching the city horizontal graphic will degrade 
the quality and I can't take that risk
Yes, stretching out the image manually by forcing width&height 
properties on the tag itself with distort and pixelize it. Never use 
false height and width values to shrink or expand an image. Use 
Photoshop, PaintShopPro, or [insert your favorite graphic editing 
software here] to alter the image's actual size.

Nothing screams amateur more than a 2.5MB JPEG whose actual dimensions 
are 1800x1600, with it set to display at 320x240 size. If the publisher 
actually took the time to shrink the image, it would look better and be 
vastly smaller. I don't have any spcific examples off the top of my 
head, but I'm sure everyone has run into this on more than one occasion 
and rolled their eyes into the back of their head.

When you design for, say, 800x600, do you have to put that in the body 
anywhere?
When I was using tables to lay stuff out, I always drew out the cells on 
a piece of paper and figured out the widths of each cell in pixel units, 
never exceeding 800px on the widths. I still do the same with CSS but 
use divs instead of cells.

Don't bother setting width to your table tag. Leave it blank. The table 
will expand to fit the cells placed inside of it. Take care with your 
table cells; simply limit yourself to 800px in added width (eg., an 
800px header cell, a 200px left cell, 600px right cell, 800px bottom 
footer space).

You won't have to declare the resolution you aim for like you would 
declare your DOCTYPE at the top of the page or the character set in the 
metas. The limitations apply to the rules you set for yourself. So if 
you go over 800 pixels in width, slap yourself around a few times and 
then come back and try again :)

If I made mistakes there, I apologize. I haven't used tables to lay out 
websites for ages now. I find tabular data tables look just fine sizing 
themselves with a couple pointers in text alignment and some minor styling.

-Ryan
*
The discussion list for http://webstandardsgroup.org/
See http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm
for some hints on posting to the list & getting help
* 

Re: [WSG] Question on javascript

[Ryan Christie]

I never got into the idea of redirecting browsers to different pages 
using JS. Using standards to make web pages renders that practice 
obsolete for the most part since you get a "one page serves all" product 
in the end.

If I use JS on any pages it is usually to make remembrance cookies on a 
user's computer or to add some bling to already established content like 
random images, date counter, etc. I don't feel JS is a reliable 
technology to use for distributing crucial pieces content, only things 
that can be considered extra.

-Ryan
Jack Kennard wrote:
I notice there are a lot of sites in this group, that are using 
javascript.
Are they mostly for determining browsers and then redirecting,
or ?

*
The discussion list for http://webstandardsgroup.org/
See http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm
for some hints on posting to the list & getting help
* 

Re: [WSG] First Post - Help with Graphic on Home Page

[Ryan Christie]

I'm not clear to what your problem is from the email? You have 3 
graphics (at least the only three that are showing up in FFox + IE6). 
One is a solid purple column, one is a city and is horizontal, and the 
other is a purple to white blender for the city bottom edge.

In FFox and IE, your blender image does slide up against the vertical 
purple image.
In FFox and IE, there is no whitespace separating either the horizontal 
or verical cells from the edge of the browser window.

A shot of your site with the cells outlined from Firefox:
http://www.theward.net/screenshot.gif>
I always design for an 800x600 resolution, which last I saw was the 
mid-line standard for the majority of users' screen resolutions, 
although I'd figure with technology advancing its probably a safe bet to 
design for 1024x768 as well. HTH.

Cheers
-Ryan
YoYoEtc wrote:
Hello Everyone:
This is my first post to this list and I do hope it is not off topic.
I am creating a web site and am working on the home page (fairly new 
web designer, too). Normally, I make the page small so it can be seen 
by older monitors but this time I wanted to see if I could have it 
fill the entire page, no matter which monitor it was being viewed on.

I am hitting two problems.
1 - I can't get the blended image at the bottom of the large 
horizontal graphic at the top to slide right over to jut up against 
the left column.

2 - Even though I have selected 100% for the size of the table, there 
is still white space above the horizontal graphic and to the left of 
the vertical graphic. My cell padding and spacing are already set to 
zero.

I put the page on another site of mine so you can see it - 
http://www.fourpawstrail.com/newsite/index.html

Can anyone help?
T
*
The discussion list for http://webstandardsgroup.org/
See http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm
for some hints on posting to the list & getting help
*

*
The discussion list for http://webstandardsgroup.org/
See http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm
for some hints on posting to the list & getting help
* 

[WSG] WAI3 in a strict DOCTYPE

[Ryan Christie]

I've run into a wall. I wasn't trying for WAI Level 3, but I've usually 
been pretty close to achieving it. Bobby always yells at me to specify 
the language of the document using the attribute lang="en" in the HTML 
header. W3C tells me though that lang="en" isn't a valid attribute. Do 
you have to pick between using transitional and getting WAI3 and using 
strict and at best getting WAI2, or is there a solution for this problem?

--

Ryan Christie
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
http://www.theward.net
*
The discussion list for http://webstandardsgroup.org/
See http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm
for some hints on posting to the list & getting help
* 

Re: [WSG] hiring a standards-savvy designer

[Ryan Christie]

I'm the guilty party Leo. Well it was 2am and I guess that came out 
convoluted.

I meant to say it would be easier to learn coding than to learn good art.
Both are talents in their own realms, but if you are forced to 
transition from one into another, I'm sure Design into HTML would be 
easier on the person.

Please don't kill me. :)

PS. -- I'm a coder. `Nuff said.

--

Ryan Christie
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
http://www.theward.net
Leo J. O'Campo wrote:

My reply didn't show the full quote... so here it is for those who 
will accuse me of taking it out of context.

Art is best left
to people that have a knack for it. But again, anyone can learn to
program.

*
The discussion list for http://webstandardsgroup.org/
See http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm
for some hints on posting to the list & getting help
* 

Re: [WSG] hiring a standards-savvy designer

[Ryan Christie]

Amen to that brother.

I agree with Christine and most of the others. Even if I take a billion 
art classes and devote the rest of my life to honing art skills, I will 
still be horrible compared to a slew of others whose design is 
immaculate but whose technical side is lacking. You can teach people 
HTML or CSS. It may take a while, but they'll catch on eventually. 
Teaching people art however is much harder. You're either good at design 
or you aren't. A person with combined skills is nice to have, but in 
most cases unless your studio is comprised of yourself and one other 
person who sleeps during their work shift, mostly not needed.

Hire artists for artistic talent, not for tech. When you need a 
developer vice-versa that and follow again. Dual-talent is great for a 
one-man team.

You'll accomplish more stylish pages by working to each other's 
weaknesses. I relate this to hiring a video game programmer and then 
telling that person on top of all their languages, they have to 
conceptualize and flesh out their own game characters. Art is best left 
to people that have a knack for it. But again, anyone can learn to program.

--

Ryan Christie
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
http://www.theward.net
Universal Head wrote:

Warning: rant.

The very fact that this is even in question with any designer is an 
indication of how degraded the title has become since computers hit 
the industry. Design was and has always been about communication and 
functionality - my degree in 84-88 was 'Visual Communications', not 
'web design' or 'making things look cool'.

Another reason - excuse the plug - why the tagline of my company is 
'Design That Works'.

It annoys and frustrates me that the reputation and integrity of the 
design industry has been so ruined in the eyes of clients by the media 
(endless images of frustrated business people trying to contact their 
designers who are out skateboarding), software developers ("buy this 
app and you'll instantly become a designer! No need to pay design 
agencies ever again!"), the greed of the dot-com boom ("I've been 
renovating bathrooms for ten years but I think I'll be a designer 
cause they make lots of money and you can work from home"), 
fly-by-night colleges ("Complete our two-week course and you'll be a 
web designer!") and the whole image of design being a cool and easy 
thing to do.

End of rant!

Peter

On 01/04/2004, at 9:36 AM, Mark Stanton wrote:

To the key character of a good web designer (apart from
artistic talent) is that they respect their medium and their
audience. If a
designer shows any sign of getting upset about having their artist
whims
challenged by "browser limitations" or accessibility - don't hire
them.
*Universal Head* 
Design That Works.

7/43 Bridge Rd Stanmore
NSW 2048 Australia
T (+612) 9517 1466
F (+612) 9565 4747
E [EMAIL PROTECTED]
W www.universalhead.com
*
The discussion list for http://webstandardsgroup.org/
See http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm
for some hints on posting to the list & getting help
* 

Re: [WSG] *sigh* drop-downs

[Ryan Christie]

Well, at least your client wants tiered drop-down menus.

My most recent client wanted, basically, a sitemap on the left side of 
every page in the site *AND* he wanted a horizontal top navigational bar 
in addition to it. My boss does wonders in dealing with fussy clients, 
and she convinced him that such a system actually makes navigation 
harder than easier for the typical user. After 2 (or may have been 
three) revisions, he was happy with what he was seeing. The convincing 
of the confusion of his navigational system didn't come from us, per 
say, (you know, the people that deal with this stuff on a daily basis) 
but by a few test drive users who raised concerns. While some people 
won't care what you say because they know best, they'll take their 
advice from a person who knows little if nothing of accessibility. Go 
figure.

Suckerfish is decent if she absolutely needs the drop-downs feel. With 3 
or 4 levels of navi, not only are tiers 3 and 4 going to reduce their 
hit count and/or annoy users for the simple fact that web users are lazy 
and want ease in navigation generally and not completeness, but the 
dropdowns won't come up at all for users without JS enabled. Without a 
second form of navigation, they'll be high and dry (if your client is 
using this as a sole means of navigation).

I'm basing off speculation, but I'd also assume that 3 or 4 levels of 
navigation will not appear semantically correct to CSS-disabled browsers 
either. This will cause problems to the 4.0 crowd, though I care less 
and less about them daily :).

I don't know what you mean by "solid" sources, since concern over this 
type of stuff comes from the very people who are members on this list, 
but if you look into Zeldman's archives and a couple of the other 
brand-namer's archives, like mezzoblue, maninblue, meyerweb, etc -- 
chances are they'll have at least mentioned something of this issue.

As for my "professional" advice, I try my hardest to stay away from JS 
in general, but *especially* in a navigational sense. I believe all 
users should at least be able to navigate a website, even if they aren't 
capable of relishing its bells and whistles. Using JS for navigation 
will screw some people (a very small number, but some nonetheless) out 
of a positive experience of finding information. Sure, allow the page to 
render crappily and still be readable, but don't by any stretch *deny* a 
user his/er navigational abilities.

--

Ryan Christie
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
http://www.theward.net
Justin French wrote:

Hi all,

I'm quoting for a client at the moment who seems to have her heart set 
on dropdown menus for the sites navigation.  I've implemented such 
menus before, and am currently using a version of the Suckerfish menus 
[1], which is fine for a one-deep hierarchy, but it looks like she 
wants 3-4 levels of depth in the menus, which is going to:

- significantly increase development time and testing time
- decrease browser compatibility & accessibility
I would also speculate that menus with such deep hierarchy would 
confuse and distract users.

But we all know how difficult it is to convince a client that they're 
wrong, especially when they see huge hierarchical menus on other 
corporate sites.  So instead, I'd like to read up (and point her to) 
any studies conducted in terms of their usability in context of 
website navigation, perhaps even compared to other forms of navigation.

I have no doubt that such menus ARE usable (we use them every day in 
Windows, Mac OS, etc), but as pointed out recently on this list (or 
another?), the menus in our OS are not *navigational* -- they're 
*functional*.

I'm confident I can provide simple, smart navigation without them, but 
first I need to find some solid proof that they're a bad idea :)

---
Justin French
http://indent.com.au
*
The discussion list for http://webstandardsgroup.org/
See http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm
for some hints on posting to the list & getting help
* 

[WSG] This is picky, pardon the anal-ness

[Ryan Christie]

I've noticed in the past a few times, but now more frequently, that 
people are replying to one thread but using that thread's same header to 
reply to other messages. I'm sure that the ones doing this aren't using 
thread mode in their email clients, but it does affect some of us. I 
don't want to read about CSS Columns in "X" site when I'm reading and 
thinking about accessibility issues in "Y" site.

Please, when you reply to a message, highlight the message you are 
responding to, click Reply in your client, and only use the resulting 
window to generate a response to that one message. If you click reply on 
a random message, wipe out the contents and reply to another's email 
*even if you change the message's subject line* it will still associate 
itself with another thread of discussion.

Sorry, had to get that out in the open :)

--

Ryan Christie
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
http://www.theward.net
*
The discussion list for http://webstandardsgroup.org/
See http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm
for some hints on posting to the list & getting help
* 

Re: [WSG] IE and CSS Rendering

[Ryan Christie]

Don't believe so. Unstyled content doesn't flash -- in fact nothing 
flashes. Just a blank screen.

Paul Brouwers wrote:

[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:

I appreciate the comments I've recieved on design issues and 
accessibility, as
those will always be continually improved. But, the real issue was 
the lagtime
in initial page load in Internet Explorer and how to fix it if 
possible...


I don't suppose you're experiencing the 'Flash of Unstyled Content'?

http://www.bluerobot.com/web/css/fouc.asp for more details.

Paul

*
The discussion list for http://webstandardsgroup.org/
*****




--

Ryan Christie
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
http://www.theward.net
*
The discussion list for http://webstandardsgroup.org/
* 

[WSG] Load problem in IE

[Ryan Christie]

There's been a problem with a bit of load lag in IE from my latest 
project. In FF08, Safari, and NN7 it comes up without the lag. Is there 
something that IE doesn't like about my page, or is it just coughing 
over the CSS used? I've done many CSS sites in the past, but haven't run 
into this lag problem.

This is also a new site, and I would appreciate any issues or comments 
about the accessibility or layout, etc. All pages are validated XHTML 
Trans and the CSS checks too :) The names of the sections/links may 
sound quite odd, but the client has requested those specific names (aka, 
can't change them).

site: http://www.theward.net/psyc
css: http://www.theward.net/psyc/css/general.css
--

Ryan Christie
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
http://www.theward.net
*
The discussion list for http://webstandardsgroup.org/
* 

Re: [WSG] Cool No-delay image rollover technique

[Ryan Christie]

You'd still get the same effect Michael, but with CSS positioning of a
solid image, your code is smaller, more users can see the rollovers,
and it just works faster. There's nothing wrong with old-fashioned
(keyword) JS rollovers, CSS is just more economical.

Michael Kear wrote:

  Wouldn't you get the same effect with old-fashioned _javascript_ rollovers if
you have caching turned off?  

I remember the first attempt I made at doing rollovers using the dreamweaver
behaviour, I couldn't figure out how come it worked beautifully on my local
machine but not on the web.  Till I realised I had caching turned off and
the images were loading every time.


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


-Original Message-
From: Ben Bishop [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] 
Sent: Monday, 16 February 2004 10:45 PM
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: Re: [WSG] Cool No-delay image rollover technique


I experience the same issue as Peter in Firefox with caching turned off.
(although I don't see a delay, I know it's loading a fresh copy of the 
image when the firewall winks at me every time I roll over tabs on the 
Fast Company web site.)

Here's a real purdy looking tutorial from Dan Cedarholm, note the 
comments bring up this very issue.
http://www.simplebits.com/archives/2003/09/30/accessible_imagetab_rollovers.
html

I agree with Peter, it's a clean way to handle roll-overs. And the 
majority of users might have caching turned on. Otherwise if you follow 
the link at the bottom of the Pixy tutorial, there's a simple band-aid.

Regards,
Ben

Peter Firminger wrote:

  
  
I know I have my browser (IE 6 WinXP Pro) set to not cache anything, 
but this method doesn't work for me. Over a second delay on rollover 
and roll off with a blank space in the meantime. It makes no 
difference to a _javascript_ preload at all. Much better code though so 
I'm not canning it.

*From:* Michael Kear
**

Using this technique you can get all the graphical/ 3d advantages
of _javascript_ rollovers, but instead of _javascript_ it uses CSS to
move an image around giving the rollover effect.

The article's at
http://www.pixy.cz/blogg/clanky/cssnopreloadrollovers/


  
  *
The discussion list for http://webstandardsgroup.org/
* 



*
The discussion list for http://webstandardsgroup.org/
***** 




  



-- 

Ryan Christie
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
http://www.theward.net



*
The discussion list for http://webstandardsgroup.org/
* 

Re: [WSG] centering rigid content

[Ryan Christie]

Looks the same way in Firefox08 as well.

LC 55 wrote:

Screenshot from Opera 7 @ http://lc55.co.uk/test/yv.jpg

Sorry Roger, but the search box seems to run into the footer links.

I honestly believe there was a posting connected to the same problem someone else had 
within the last 14 days.
Check the archives of the WSG to find it.
Sorry I can't be of more help.
Regards, JG

--- [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:

alright i didnt make the pool but i tried this:

made a new div called outer and positioned it absolute with top 140px and width 100%. wrapped that around everything and it makes the content work, for the most part, in safari. so now that I have .04% of the market working can someone look at this in IE6 and tell me how FUBARed it is?

www.desertstandard.net/yv2/

cheers

roger

 

--

Ryan Christie
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
http://www.theward.net
 

*
The discussion list for http://webstandardsgroup.org/
* 

Re: [WSG] CSS/XHTML NavBar and IE6

[Ryan Christie]

Hi Paul.

The gaps you speak of are part of the CSS parsing bug by IE.
In any CSS declaration where width is in use with padding or borders or 
both, you must use the CSS hack to feed IE a false value and Safari, 
etc.. the right value.
Or, you can use a method to get around using the hack.

See http://web.theward.net/dodgingcsshacks.html for more information.

As for the rollover delays, you could try specifying a preload for the 
alternate images. A List Apart also has an excellent article on 
no-preload rollovers using CSS and positioning which can be found at

http://www.pixy.cz/blogg/clanky/cssnopreloadrollovers/

good luck.

And right Robert Moser, I do have black there instead of red. Will fix 
that typo shortly -- thanks!

Paul Ross wrote:

Hello folks,

(First post to this excellent list - thanks Russ/Peter for setting me up).

I am trying to ditch the HTML tables addiction and keeping to standards-based
designs from now on. The annoying thing is I can do this in 30 seconds using the
'old' methods but I'm having problems. I need some guidance on the image navbar
where I have used a Eric Meyer CSS-only method for the rollovers (instead of
JavaScript code soup). Here's my test page...
http://www.skyrocket.com.au/Concepts/Books24x7/index.html

Works fine in Mozilla 1.5, Safari 1.0 but using IE6 on a PC there's a gap at the
top and bottom of the navbar of maybe 5px. Any ideas why? Also, there is a
significant delay on mouseover depending on the browser used. The rollover state
doesn't seem to load until a user rolls over the button hot spot. Can this be
sped up somehow? Any help appreciated.
Regards
PAUL ROSS
SkyRocket Design Co
http://www.skyrocket.com.au
-
This mail sent through IMP: http://horde.org/imp/
*
The discussion list for http://webstandardsgroup.org/
* 
 

--
---
Ryan Christie
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
http://www.theward.net
---
*
The discussion list for http://webstandardsgroup.org/
* 

Re: [WSG] "Dodging CSS Hacks" Tutorial

[Ryan Christie]

Box A's background becomes the border when you make a 5px margin on Box 
B ... I believe I used the word "appear"... It's sort of faking a 
border, if you will.

When built you'll see what I mean (and why it can only be solid)

Robert Moser wrote:

[EMAIL PROTECTED] blurted out:

Thank you for the feedbacks, keep them coming :)


In your Method 1 CSS sample, the explanation mentions a 5px red 
border, but there is no border attribute anywhere in the sample.  
Perhaps the margin: 5px; in the #box_b selector was supposed to be border?


--
-------
Ryan Christie
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
http://www.theward.net
---
*
The discussion list for http://webstandardsgroup.org/
* 

Re: Opening pages in new windows... was Re: [WSG] XHTML (OT??)

[Ryan Christie]

True, Firebird can tend to load pages slower. It is because Firebird 
loads one image at a time whereas IE will load 4 or 5 at once. There is 
a way around this

See "Speed up page rendering" and "Pipelining" -- if you implement those 
into your Firebird installation, it should narrow that load lag by a few 
seconds.
http://www.texturizer.net/firebird/tips.html#oth_rendering

Also, nobody's mentioned it yet, so I guess I'll go ahead and beat Mr. 
Russ to a link for this week: http://www.texturizer.net/firebird
"Firebird 0.8 is due out for release this Monday"

Chris Stratford wrote:

I do use them both...
I have both open now, and always.
Just that CrazyBrowser seems a lot faster loading etc... and its got a
nice small interface, where Firebirds tabs are huge which reduce screen
size...
I am only running this at 1400x1050 resolution, so height is important,
and firebird has a huge menu and a lot of crap... then the task bar -
about 1/7th the screen is gone, where as in CB its only about 1/10th is
taken up...
Maybe someone here feels the same way about firebird? (on both I have
the address bar and Links bar visible (they have all my links I need in
them)
-
Chris Stratford
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
www.neester.com
-
 

*
The discussion list for http://webstandardsgroup.org/
* 

Re: Opening pages in new windows... was Re: [WSG] XHTML (OT??)

[Ryan Christie]

Why not just use Firebird instead of a hacked up IE6 add-in? Will 
probably have a better browsing experience with the real thing instead 
of all that imitation stuff.

The only times I ever open IE are when I'm forced to because of 
propriety Javascript applications that will only run themselves in IE 
(.class files.. curse them)

Chris Stratford wrote:

Ok since I started this topic, I probably should write back...

Personally - I use crazybrowser, its just IE6 with a tabbed interface
(very similar to FireBird).
I always open links in new windows so I can go back, only forums do I
keep in the one tab...
I like a visual history written in tabs along my screen, so instead of
the back button - I press F2 to go back a tab...
But not all users do the same as i...

So I make all my external links (CSS & XHTML Validator) link to a new
window...
That's about it, only external links, or links on my website which are
OT...
Like a subdomain or whatnot...
I HATE website where every page is a new window...
It shits me to tears really... it gets under my skin...
That's what lead me to crazybrowser (btw - www.crazybrowser.com)
It's the IE Version of Firebirds interface (middle click open new tabs &
closes tabs etc...)
Anyway!
that's my reasoning!
 

*
The discussion list for http://webstandardsgroup.org/
* 

Re: [WSG] Top businesses ignore accessibility

[Ryan Christie]

Hell yeah David - way to lead the crowds :)

russ weakley wrote:

"A survey of 100 top companies has found that they are largely failing in
their moral and legal duty to make their websites accessible to those using
assistive devices, such as screenreaders and Braille displays.
http://www.internet-magazine.com/news/view.asp?id=3913

However, there is some good news in the article:
"Only one site had valid HTML - BHP Billiton..."
The BHP Billiton site was developed by Melbourne WSG member David McDonald.
Go David!
:)
Russ
*
The discussion list for http://webstandardsgroup.org/
* 



 

*
The discussion list for http://webstandardsgroup.org/
* 

Re: [WSG] Traitor unmasked!

[Ryan Christie]

Peter... it's like watching Frodo break down with that ring in his 
pocket my friend. `Twould be so easy to flop that sucker on and satisfy 
your inner desires, but you got to fight it. Just before you were up in 
a tiff about the frustrations, and today you turned over. You need to 
take this weekend off, get laid, drink heavily, and just get in a zone 
to concentrate on the code. Soothe your nerves. Screw the clients for a 
moment. Use tables at work to make your job easier for awhile, but just 
keep at CSS until you feel comfortable with it on the side.

I'm younger than most on this list and as such I don't work full time 
and don't necessarily work under the hot breath of clients trying to 
meet deadlines and keep production costs down, so I get to play and 
experiment a bit more and likely pick things up quicker than the average 
joe. Definitely not as talented as Russ or the other big wigs in here, 
but imitation is the purest form of flattery, no? :)

It *WILL* come to you Peter, it just will probably take awhile. I can 
only imagine what it's like to be a one-man design team and meet 
deadlines. I'm sure it doesn't warrant much time to stop, sit back, and 
learn at your own pace. Rushing into CSS especially is tough because you 
miss the small things that make the biggest loads of difference. When I 
write CSS now, I write with the hacks and incompatibilities all in mind 
which has cut down on having to go back and stare at my terminal with 
bloodshot eyes cursing standards. I went through that phase, still do 
sometimes, like was mentioned earlier. It gets easier though. Much 
easier. But it takes time, patience, and a tranquilizer IV to get there.

I'm actually mid-process right now at my job trying to incorporate div 
layouts into a website that is 100% tables and 100% non-standard. By 
website I mean the entire collective of pages that make up 
http://www.jmu.edu ... it is purely speculative at this point, but all 
pages follow a similar template and I want to forumlate a war plan to 
take this bull by the horns. In the meantime, I'm currently assigned to 
two projects at the moment for the psychology department and the 
computer science department. After months and months of studying and 
toying and a handful of mock jobs, and "fireside standards" chats with 
my boss who also wants to see standards employed usually at 8am over a 
steaming cup of joe at the office, it's finally starting to pull through 
for me.

Psychology and computer science are looking at XHTML 1.0 strict 
div-layout sites templated by hand in Dreamweaver. If anyone cares to 
take the validator and rip-roar through the university websites, you'll 
find all table layouts, all shabby, and they're even using font tags 
still. I usually do a search through JMU web each morning looking for a 
horrible site to laugh at - call it my Mon-Fri Saturday funnies. Psych 
and CS will be the milestone in determining if the trend will take or 
we'll be stuck with hybrid tabled layouts, which are much more of a pain 
in the ass to develop.

Psychcology and CS have the same underlying code structures, but both 
have radically different CSS controllers. ZenGarden gave me the idea, 
and after I came up with the initital specs on a general code strcture, 
developing both the sites took a week less than what they used to. In a 
couple days when the TSEC group gives a final nod to what the graphics 
designer is brewing up, it's going div-laid as well. One of Russ's 
recent emails was great for me, since I had to give reason to start 
making the change now, and furthermore, my boss, who also acts as the PR 
to the (grumpy, outspoken, know-it-all, ... etc) college faculty 
overseeing the development, needed something to tell the departments on 
how their sites were being developed.

So she basically didn't tell them anything specific ... just that we'd 
let them know when a working copy was ready to be viewed and tested. It 
has worked beautifully so far. Explaining that it might not work in all 
browsers but remain readable nonetheless would have blown the projects 
to smitherns - because "not work" isn't an option for education 
websites that need to be up and accessible for students. As Peter 
hinted, the lowest viewing came from an IE 5.5 installation on the Linux 
professor's outdated office machine, and even then there were no 
complaints. What they don't know don't hurt em.

Without this list, I think I'd still be stuck chopping up BMP's in 
Fireworks into grainy tabled JPG horrors that took a year and then some 
to load.

No fruit from here, just some hope.

--Ryan
http://www.theward.net
Universal Head wrote:

I feel like I'm going to be hunted down by the Inquisition but I just 
gave up, added two simple two column tables to my code, and got the 
whole thing working within half an hour.

I'm still going to be using CSS when I can, but when it comes to work 
it's Transitional all the way for the moment.


Peter.


**

Re: [WSG] Going Mad with pleasing the browsers

[Ryan Christie]

That's the thing though - you'll have to use hacks. Now, hacks are
commonplace in order to maintain browser compatibility in CSS. We can
all entend a big poop-covered handshake over to our Microsoft boys for
placing us in this position. Understand that it is the fault of the
browsers and not of the language itself that CSS hacks are completely
necessary if you are going tableless and have either padding or border
properties in your CSS file. Margins don't cause problems.

If you are unfamiliar with the box model, here's a short rundown (aka
why you need to use CSS hacks) ... and also, your little "be nice to
netscape" rule there is technically a hack as well. cough ;) we'll let
that one slide heh heh.

Say you have a div, in your case controlled by #contentwrapper

#contentcontainer {
position: relative;
width: 747px;
background-image: url(../../images/global/backgrounds/contents_tiler.gif);
background-color: #365878;
background-repeat: repeat-y;
background-position: left top;
}
#contentwrapper {
 font-size: 1em;
 text-align: justify;
 line-height: 1.8em;
 background-image: url(../../images/global/backgrounds/border.gif);
 background-repeat: no-repeat;
 background-position: right top;
 padding-bottom: 1px; /*Fix NS 7 bug where it breaks footer from the
contents container */
 padding-top: 30px;
 padding-left: 20px;
 padding-right: 35px;
}

Let's cut out all the other garbage for length's sake and deal with
hack-worthy material.
#contentcontainer {
width: 747px;
}

#contentwrapper {
 padding-bottom: 1px; /*Fix NS 7 bug where it breaks footer from the
contents container */
 padding-top: 30px;
 padding-left: 20px;
 padding-right: 35px;
}

You've chosen a most interesting way to get around not using a hack by
placing the box within a box, and then not specifying a width in the
inner container. I would opt for a hack here and save some filesize. In
addition to hacks for IE, it's common to see them for Opera as well.
Opera users though are much more keen to actually updating their
software when a new version comes out. Why some people are still using
IE5.0 at home is beyond me. Maybe they didn't get the memo.

In other areas, there are some possible problems.

#mainnav ul li #services{
	background-image: url(../../images/global/mainnav/services.gif);
	background-repeat: no-repeat;
	height: 113px;
	width: 82px;
	background-position: left top;
	display: block;
	padding-right: 10px;
}

Your width will not be 82px there, it will be 92px in IE. (82 + 10). If
you had

border: 1px solid #000;

in there as well, it would be 1 + 82 + 10 + 1 or 94 pixels. That's what
the screwed up box model handling of IE does, adds width plus border
size, plus padding to determine the size of the overall box. You're
bound to run into a wall somewhere along the line if you're doing
tablefree layouts hackless. I always use the voice-family flavour to
spoof the retarded browsers, but there are other methods that work
equally as well. I don't particularly like using hacks either, and I
see the basis behind this recent tableless layout deal as well - tables
are for tabular data, not for web layouts. When the table property was
created, layouts were not in the minds of those making it. It's all
about meaning. That's why there was the definition wars in here awhile
back. What constitutes their correct usage? Text definitions or a
broader spectrum? I say broader spectrum within reasonable boundaries.

I wish I could say there will come a day when hacks are but a laughable
history. Hopefully I'll live to see it, because after all the malice I
have for IE and users with grossly outdated browsers - it'll be nice to
laugh it off instead of take an uzi and round up the Microsoft IE
development team for payback. There will be more hacks to be learned
and used in the future probably, and just like right now, those hacks
will be for the 2 percent of the population who don't know what the
word upgrade means. How will we get to hackless web bliss?

One Browser to rule them all, One Browser to find them,
One Browser to bring them all and in the Standards bind them.

Just like keeping a secret is easier if you're the only one who knows
it, keeping code standard requires one browser with no quirks and
perfect handling that everyone uses on their machines. Being as IE is
the least compliant and most popular browser, it's damn near impossible
to hope for anything close to that right now.

And even with the One Browser, there will still be One Browser 1.0, One
Browser 2.0, One Browser 3.0... etc. Do you see the circle we're
running around? :)

--Ryan
http://www.theward.net

JW wrote:

  
  
  

  

 I'm trying to avoid using hacks if possible. 
 
Now what I need to find out is what are the causes of the
problems. Feeling so dazed by all these.
 
 
Best Wishes
Jaime

  
  
  

  

Re: [WSG] Programmer's Challenge [Virus checkedAU]

[Ryan Christie]

I think that what was more in our minds was a browser that could switch
rendering engines on the fly in one window. For example, in the famous
FB.7 release, if you navigate to a website that has different CSS
styles available to be loaded, you can switch styles using an icon that
pops up in the lower left-hand corner (for example,
http://www.theward.net, or http://www.texturizer.net/firebird) ... If
there was an application out there that I could use to switch from
rendering engine to rendering engine, browser to browser ... I would
galdly pay over US$100 for the convienience.

I currently have all the separate browsers installed. Saying it's a
pain in the ass to constantly check between 4 versions of IE, 3
versions of Netscape, 3 versions of Opera, Mozilla 1.5, Firebird.7,
reboot into Linux, and check all the browsers in there is a HANEOUS
understatement.

--Ryan
http://www.theward.net

Universal Head wrote:
Someone's
already found a way to install multiple IEs on one PC:
  
  
http://www.insert-title.com/web_design/?page=articles/dev/multi_IE

  
  
Guess my dream of a clever app that can do it all will always remain a
dream ...
  
Peter
  
  
  What you'll need:



  
  

  Universal
Head 
  
Design That Works.
  
  
7/43 Bridge Rd Stanmore
  
NSW 2048 Australia
  
T (+612) 9517 1466
  
F (+612) 9565 4747
  
E [EMAIL PROTECTED]
  
W www.universalhead.com
  
  
  

Re: [WSG] Going Mad with pleasing the browsers

[Ryan Christie]

It took me a week's worth of work before I actually smoothed out my CSS
enough to the point where it tested correctly in all browsers that are
CSS-layout capable. The rest just get fed the barebones HTML with
sparse images, and a short & sweet notice about upgrading their
browser with download links :)

In your case, look up how to implement the Opera-friendly and
IE-friendly CSS hacks into your CSS file. It will most likely fix at
least one of the problems below, in addition to other problems that are
likely yet unforseen :) After you get in the habit of div/CSS layouts,
it'll go much quicker. Probably back down to a day at most. I'm sure
the first time we all dealt with table layouts it was tricky at first
as well.

--Ryan
http://www.theward.net

JW wrote:

  
  

  

  

Hello everyone
 
I am new to the list and enjoyed reading the woes and
sorrows. J/K :)
 
I am fairly new to building a site using pure CSS. After
reading so much about CSS and that it seems that the trend is shifting
to no tables, I finally gave in to trying to start on my current
project with using CSS. Using tables, I would have
completed implementing the site in a day. But with CSS, I took 3 days!
Most of the time, trying to find out why Mozilla, Netscape, IE, Opera
are trying to drive me to the grave by rendering different
results...
 
But despite all these, I can't deny the fact that I
somehow enjoy the torture. CSS is rather fun once you immerse yourself
into it especially when you are not an expert in it. Have been visiting
Max Designs for guidance. I see his website more than my TV &
dressing table these few days. 
 
 
These 2 are the test pages: -
 
Long Page:  http://designs.sodesires.com/maxprime/index.html
Short Page: http://designs.sodesires.com/maxprime/index_short.html
 
The browsers I used to test : IE 6, NS 7, Mozilla 0.7,
Opera 7.02
 
 
Problems I can't solve: -
 
1) Opera only: The hover at the main navigation on the top
of the page is not working.
 
2) Netscape only: For short page - Netscape refuses to
show the background because the sidebar (column 2) is floated to the
right and it is longer than the 1st column. It will show the background
if the 1st column is longer but that is not what I want. I do not want
to be restricted. I want flexibility of text length in either columns.
 
3) Netscape only: As the footer has top padding in order
to position the contents in it, Netscape shows a white area above the
footer. In order to fix it, I have to put a bottom padding for my
content wrapper. It doesn't matter if it is 1px or 10px etc. As long as
I put a bottom padding, Netscape is happy. Anyone knows why?
 
 
Below is the layout of the div I have for the contents
section and the CSS for it: -
 





 
#contentcontainer {
 position: relative;
 width: 747px;
 background-image:
url(../../images/global/backgrounds/contents_tiler.gif);
 background-color: #365878;
 background-repeat: repeat-y;
 background-position: left top;
}
 
#contentwrapper {
 font-size: 1em;
 text-align: justify;
 line-height: 1.8em;
 background-image: url(../../images/global/backgrounds/border.gif);
 background-repeat: no-repeat;
 background-position: right top;
 padding-bottom: 1px; /*Fix NS 7 bug where it breaks footer from the
contents container */
 padding-top: 30px;
 padding-left: 20px;
 padding-right: 35px;
}
 
#sidebar {
 margin-top: 30px;
 float: right;
 width: 25%;
}
 
#contents {
 width: 70%;
 background-position: right top;
 padding-right: 3%;
}


Being my very 1st attempt using CSS and no tables to build
a site, please do let me know if I did something wrong. I have no idea
how safe it is to present this to the customer. Almost feel like
presenting the table layout instead because I will know that nothing
will go wrong with the layout. Thank you!
 
Best Wishes
Jaime

  
  


  

  
  
  
  
  
  

  


  

  
  
    IncrediMail - Email has
finally evolved - Click Here



<>

Re: [WSG] Browser / OS combo irregularity

[Ryan Christie]

Where to begin...

I was going to quote Zeldman's orange book, being the little Zeldmanite 
I am, but I'll go freestyle in the hopes that I get his concepts well 
enough by this point in time!

Image maps have (for the most part) fallen out of grace. I used to use 
them at one time (actually, right up until I cracked my ass down on all 
this standards hoopla and learned more techniques), but have since 
deviated away from tables all together for the most part and use div 
layouts. Anyhows, back in my table days I got pretty good with chopping 
them up just right and piecing them back together again. To make a short 
story shorter, I found that dicing up the image map into separate chunks 
using GIF compression made for a quicker load time than using one solid 
bar. It also carried the benefit of not having to rework an entire site 
when I wanted to add one new link to a feature on the navigational area.

If you're talking HTML filesize, going to chunked linked images will 
usually save a few bytes as well.

It's also a pain to generate new coordinates each time you need to 
change the map areas.

If you're a sucker for accessibility (like I am) image maps also do not 
permit navigation to screen readers.

The more I design, the more I see a different way of doing things - 
using text where images used to be, using CSS for "this" instead of 
Javascript, etc... I also see where image maps can bog down a developer 
in terms of redesign and adding new features.

I work for a .edu site as well. http://www.jmu.edu, or more 
specifically, http://medialab.jmu.edu is my department. In the past year 
and a half I've been working there, I've done work to quite a few 
different sites altering them to be more updateable in nature, and am 
currently doing a site from the ground up in XHTML1.0 + CSS, in a 
tableless layout environment. The graphics for the layout are 8-bit PNG 
with a JPG graphical header and total about 12kb in size. The HTML 
markup without content is roughly 4kb in size. Had I used tables, that 
would probably easily be around 8 or 9. The CSS file is a one-time 
download of 9kb, and it runs site-wide. A typical page with content 
typically loads in around 2.5-3 seconds on 56k modems.

So, personally, I think that realm is where everyone should want to 
eventually wind up at some point in their work. I've gone bit by bit 
towards a minimalist CSS-driven style of designing web sites, and I'm 
sort of happy that I wound up there. In the future, redesigning for a 
fresh look will take about 2 hours, and there's ample room to continue 
adding content and links in the meantime without a redesign.

I'm actually redesigning a site that uses a huge image map tomorrow 
(http://orgs.jmu.edu/signlanguageclub) and bringing it to valid code and 
no tables.
It's a pretty basic site, so expect some results tomorrow. I'll have 
both versions posted in their entirety + source around 10pm eastern 
standard time.

I can talk the talk. Tomorrow I walk the walk. ;)

Summary: nixing image maps will save you trouble, time, and redesign 
strife somewhere along the road, ane probably lead to smaller load times 
as well.

--Ryan
http://www.theward.net
PS - things to keep in mind: I code by hand, despise complex table 
layouts, and live life and web design by the "Keep It Simple Stupid" motto.

Veine K Vikberg wrote:

Ryan;

Lets hear your reasoning for not using them, and I am willing to 
change if your reasoning is good enough ;o)
However, this client is these days *very* concerned with download 
time, and as it stands the page is downloading at approximately 8 
seconds on a 56K modem under perfect conditions (not that it ever is 
but...) and that is what he wanted +2 seconds (he said under 10) with 
the graphics broken up,  I am close to that ten second mark, but if 
there is something I do not know about image maps, please enlighten 
me. (I did the one located at http://www.mainemaritime.edu 3 years ago 
when wait was the norm so it was no concern)

  Regards
  ~Veine
At 07:25 PM 2/2/2004 -0500, you wrote:


This really has nothing to do with your email, but I'd recommend 
staying away from image maps :) i always peek under the hood at the 
sites that get sent out on the list. As it's not released yet, you'd 
still have time to change your deployment method. If you don't agree, 
that's cool. I'm just biased against them :)

--Ryan
http://www.theward.net
Veine K Vikberg wrote:

Hello;

http://www.mainemaritime.edu/redesign

On Mac (OS8.5/IE5.1) looks good, except for around the search box, 
where there is some weird things going on.

If anyone has any help/advice/links to help I would greatly 
appreciate them, especially the first problem as the client will 
look on his page through NS 7.1/XP Pro

   TIA & Regards
~Veine


Veine K Vikberg
http://www.vikberg.net
Professional Web Guru

*
The discussion list for http://webstandardsgroup.org/

Re: [WSG] Browser / OS combo irregularity

[Ryan Christie]

This really has nothing to do with your email, but I'd recommend staying 
away from image maps :) i always peek under the hood at the sites that 
get sent out on the list. As it's not released yet, you'd still have 
time to change your deployment method. If you don't agree, that's cool. 
I'm just biased against them :)

--Ryan
http://www.theward.net
Veine K Vikberg wrote:

Hello;

Well, thanks to the Dane on this list (Anders Ebdrup) one of my major 
problems are fixed, now I have a smaller one (I think).

On this page:

http://www.mainemaritime.edu/redesign

I have some problems, it looks wonderful in Moz/NN6+/IE with WinXP/98 
Home on PC, which by the looks of the server logs are around 92% of 
the population visiting this site, but in Netscape 7 / XP Pro there is 
some things that are breaking apart (I can only say what the client 
told me, as I don't have XP Pro to test out on) The middle rollover 
has a white line under it, and the bottom right graphic (US News 
image) has a black line under it, and the around the search box there 
are some strange 2-3 pixel wide blue before the input box.

Anyone having any clue to why this happen, and even better how to deal 
with it?

On Mac (OS8.5/IE5.1) looks good, except for around the search box, 
where there is some weird things going on.

If anyone has any help/advice/links to help I would greatly appreciate 
them, especially the first problem as the client will look on his page 
through NS 7.1/XP Pro

   TIA & Regards
~Veine
Veine K Vikberg
http://www.vikberg.net
Professional Web Guru


*
The discussion list for http://webstandardsgroup.org/
* 

Re: [WSG] Stupid BORDER Problem!

[Ryan Christie]

This will just be an educated guess -- you might try adding
display:block; to the CSS. Also, IE6 (get a better browser) has a box
model bug that padding affects. Whenever applicable, I try to use
margins as that dooesn't add any troubles. If IE isn't putting the
borders in above/below the text, it probably thinks it can't spare that
extra 2 pixels of space on the top or bottom. Good luck Chris.

Chris Stratford wrote:

  
  
  
  
  

  
  
  Hey everyone!
   
  Just a
problem with IE again, and wondering if there are any ways around it…
   
  You may or
may not have experience this.
   
  When you have
a link, and you are styling it;
  Say like
this:
   
  a, a:active,
a:visited
  {
    background-color:
blue;
    border: 1px
dotted red;
    padding: 2px;
    text-decoration:
none;
   
  }
   
  a:hover
  {
    boder: 1px
solid red;
    text-decoration:
underline;
  }
   
  not only is that ONE
ugly looking
link (not the point) – but when placed in a container, where there is
no
conten above or below… the BORDER will only show up on the SIDES…
not TOP or BOTTOM…
  I havnt tested with
other browsers
but in IE6 it doesn’t work…
  Now, without adding any
content
above or below that LINK… can I fix that problem?
  Or is it something we
all must live
with?
   
  Thanks!
   
   
  -
  Chris
Stratford
  [EMAIL PROTECTED]
  www.neester.com
  -
   
  




*
The discussion list for http://webstandardsgroup.org/
* 

Re: [WSG] Web Editor?

[Ryan Christie]

Dreamweaver currently produces the cleanest and most valid code, and is
one of the most polished WYSIWYG editors out there. Zeld's cronies
worked with Macromedia to bring the program up to date with handling
standards. It does the job pretty well. I don't use the visual design
view all too often when using the program because writing my own code
out by hand is easier. Dreamweaver color codes basically everything you
enter, and in the newest MX2004 version, is also able to be set to
catch code that will not be compatible with specified browsers. So, if
you're designing for MS IE 4.0 clients, Dreamweaver will underline code
not recognized by that browser in red squiggly like MS Word would do
with bad spelling. All in all, an excellent tool, even for those who
aren't going to use DW for its WYSIWYG qualities. The program also
accepts expansion plugins as do all Macromedia dev programs that will
add new features or update currently existing features.

The only downside is the pricetag. Like was mentioned earlier though,
you get what you pay for.

Adobe's latest version of Pagemill is supposed to be decent as well,
but after working with it in the past I gave it up for Windows
Notepad.Pagemill is expensive and really not worth it in my opinion.
When I'm on a mac, I use BBEdit unless it has DW installed :)

I use KDE's Bluefish editor when I'm on Linux.

--Ryan
http://www.theward.net

Taco Fleur wrote:

  
  
  Web Editor?

  What Web Editor out there produces the
cleanest and most valid code?
  
  - Editor that is embedded in IE (seen
it, produces really nasty markup)
  
  - Editor that is embedded in Netscape (no
exprience)
  
  - Ektron (used it many years ago, was
pretty happy with it)
  
  - .
  
  - Etc.
  
  And which one works in most of the
browsers?
  
  Taco Fleur
07 3535 5072
  
  http://www.tacofleur.com/index/blog/
  
  Tell me and I will forget
Show me and I will remember
Teach me and I will learn
  




*
The discussion list for http://webstandardsgroup.org/
* 

Re: [WSG] entities

[Ryan Christie]

’ is an alternate (easier to remember) code than the official 
unicode definition of ’. All possible characters have a specific 
number assigned to them in Unicode. The lettered helpers came out after 
unicode was out to ease the pain of having to remember a set of digits 
that had nothing to do with the character being assigned. As such, 
browser support for the lettered versions can faulter. The numbered 
version is official Unicode, and should be recognized just about anywhere.

--Ryan
http://www.theward.net
Universal Head wrote:

A quick HTML Entities question. For a closed single quote, for 
example, is it better to use

’

or

’

- and what is the distinction?
Peter
*
The discussion list for http://webstandardsgroup.org/
* 

Re: [WSG] A few links...

[Ryan Christie]

All list emails are accessible in the archives on the WSG website if you 
login. The archives can be found on the right side in the navigation. 
That's why you're not supposed to send out superfluous emails. Like this 
one.. ...   ... .. doh. Sorry Russ ;)

--Ryan
http://www.theward.net
Denis Boudreau [ CYBERcodeur ] wrote:

Vaska.WSG wrote:

russ, i just wanted to mention that these links you provide 
perdiodically have really been helping me get up to speed with css - 
thank you very much!  if you're ever in brussels, i'll gladly buy you 
a beer...


A silent but nonetheless very interested follower of this list, I've 
been meaning to ask this for a while now... are these links compiled 
somewhere on a web page or archive ? It would be great to be able to 
consult this ever-growing resource every now and then, like it's now 
possible with the CSS-Vault web site, not just by selecting every one 
of Russ' messages that contain "few links" in the title. ;)

*
The discussion list for http://webstandardsgroup.org/
* 

Re: [WSG] AudioSite template - almost there ...

[Ryan Christie]

Hello everyone - after a brief email break I'm back reading the list
mails ;)

Hi Peter.

For the rollovers, you can try and see how it would fair using :hover
elements on the container tags. It won't be as easy to implement as
Java, but it will run on browsers regardless of whether or not they
allow or have Java turned on. Using the hover switch on div tags is
much the same as using it on a tags. You set a load state and a
rollover state. I've not the time atm to throw together an example, but
I'm sure someone else can/uses the method on their site.

I ran your XHTML through the validator, and came across a few errors.
Fortunately, unlike W3's validator, I offer solutions :) [i really wish
they'd stop being all geek and start being a bit helpful already]

Line 36,
column 26:  there is no attribute "onLoad"


I'm not exactly sure if onLoad applied to the body element or not, but
I believe it does. If I'm right, it's just a matter of making the L in
"onLoad" lowercase. remember, all attributes must be in lowercase. This
includes _javascript_ calling functions (eg, 
onmouseover)

Line 51,
column 61:  there is no attribute "hsrc"
..g src="" hsrc="images/nav_home_select.gif"
width="69"

seems like a simple goof, there is no existing attribute named "hsrc"..
you already have src listed before that is declared.

Line 55,
column 154:  start tag was here
 (explain...)
...p://search.atomz.com/search/">Search

Line 55,
column 239: end tag for "input" omitted, but OMITTAG NO was
specified
...nbsp;

you need to close all input tags either with  or a
"/>" at the end

As for your h2 tag errors, you have your sidebar tags set up currently
as < /h2>< /a>, however
because of restrictions in inline and block level tags, h2 may not be
contained by an 'a' tag. It CAN however be contained by block level
tags, like div for example *nudge nudge. If you're bent on keeping the
 wrapping, set up a span.sidenavigation rule, and use span
instead of h2 to control how they appear.

Good luck on your launch

--Ryan
http://www.theward.net

Universal Head wrote:

  
  AudioSite template - almost there
...
  Almost there, but before I spread this design throughout my
site,
can I ask a few more questions. I've checked validation but the
problems come from a few things for which there may be better
alternatives - suggestions most welcome. Some of this I cobbled from
other sites and while it works, there may be better ways of doing
things.
  
  
  http://universalhead.com/clients/jands/audio.html
  
  
  CSS at:
  
  
  http://universalhead.com/clients/jands/css/jands.css
  
  
  On the page:
  - the search field is just a placeholder for the moment
  - I use a bit of _javascript_ to create image rollovers. This
causes Validation problems. Is there a better way to do these
rollovers?
  - I get a bunch of these, which I don't understand:
  
  
  Line 65, column 150: document type
does not allow element "h2" here; missing one of
"object", "applet", "map",
"iframe", "button", "ins", "del"
start-tag
   ...t="75"
alt="Shure" class="logo"
/>ShureBrief summary of
produ
  
  
  - in IE 5 and Opera 6 on the Mac, I get two problems:
      - a bit
of whitespace to the left of the square icon link images
      - the
bit of text and the search field under the navigation don't line up
the same way as in all browsers
  
  
  I've fiddled with these problems but have come up out of my
depth.
  
  
  VERY much appreciate help with this folks - I'm gunning towards
the best coded site I've every made and the help here is absolutely
invaluable. Free beers for those passing by my studio in
Stanmore!
  
  
  Cheers
  Peter
  
  -- 
  
  
  
peter gifford
  
universal head 
design that works
  
visit  7/43 bridge road
      stanmore nsw
2048
     australia
call   (+612) 9517 1466
fax (+612) 9565 4747
email   [EMAIL PROTECTED]
site 
  www.universalhead.com
  




*
The discussion list for http://webstandardsgroup.org/
* 

[WSG] XHTML/CSS standards guide

[Ryan Christie]

Hey guys,

I've been working on writing a learners guide to XHTML / CSS composition 
and usage which is intended for beginners. It's going to be used to help 
train new employees that come to work for the design company within my 
university (http://medialab.jmu.edu). My boss is interested in 
implementing standards compliance in our produced websites, and it'll be 
important that people like our graphic designers and new coders know 
what's going on and start to get in the habit of standards.

This will be an ongoing project. As of right now, there are just three 
pages published. If you have the time and want to give it a breeze 
through (experts and novice alike) and let me know what's good, what's 
bad, what's not clear, and what is glaringly incorrect I'd appreciate it :)

link: http://web.theward.net/whatisxhtml.html

Ryan
http://www.theward.net
*
The discussion list for http://webstandardsgroup.org/
* 

Re: [WSG] What have I missed here?

[Ryan Christie]

I'm taking a glance at your page errors and will give you a few points 
to help you get stuff sorted out./

Line 48 
, 
column 112/: there is no attribute "height" (explain... 
)
|...llspacing="0" cellpadding="0" height="18">|

table's height are defined by the total height of it's columns. columns 
have a height property, tables do not.

/Line 92 
, 
column 154/: character "&" is the first character of a delimiter but 
occurred as data ...=MC">Timber / Metal Combination Legs & Metal 
Legs

|
Anywhere you want an ampersand to display on a page, it has to be entered using its
unicode encoding which is &
|/Line 150 , column 
82/:  required attribute "alt" not specified (explain... 
).
 |com.au/images/SmallFooterSymbol.jpg">|
All images have to have an alt attribute in xhtml. It's pretty easy to forget to 
include
alt's if you're not always thinking about it. i do it all the time :)
/Line 150 , 
column 86/:  end tag for "img" omitted, but OMITTAG NO was specified
 |au/images/SmallFooterSymbol.jpg">
you didn't close the img tag properly. In XHTML, img tags have to be written up as
 .. if you add a space and slash to the end of your
img tags, these errors will go away. same goes for the  tag you used; needs to be 
|/Line 152 
, 
column 26/:  reference not terminated by REFC delimiter
|© 2003 Auslegs, Pitt Town, NSW, Australia
that's just a run-on mumbo jumbo for "you forgot to put a semicolon after the ©"
|//||
HTH bud
-Ryan
http://www.theward.net
Michael Kear wrote:

A are you saying just cos there's 56 teensy weensy little errors that
makes a difference
Gulp!   Yeah. Well by the time I've fixed all those I might just have fixed
whatever the problem is. 

Thanks Peter.

Cheers
Mike Kear
-Original Message-
From: Peter Firminger [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] 
Sent: Sunday, 21 December 2003 1:08 PM
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: RE: [WSG] What have I missed here?

Hi Michael,

First problem is that the page isn't valid.

http://validator.w3.org/check?uri=http://auslegs.com.au/about/index.cfm

Second, the CSS isn't valid.

http://jigsaw.w3.org/css-validator/validator?uri=http://auslegs.com.au/style
s/auslegs.css&warning=1&profile=css2&usermedium=all
I suggest sorting those issues out first as this will eliminate some of the
problems and make troubleshooting easier for others. A doctype is very
important as it affects how browsers render the page.
Regards,

Peter

 

-Original Message-
From: Michael Kear [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Sent: Sunday, December 21, 2003 4:36 AM
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: [WSG] What have I missed here?
I tried using the classic CSS menu from the Uberlink CSS
Rollovers: Overview
article I picked up on this list.  I managed to copy the code
and style
sheet from that tutorial, and now I want to see how it will
work on a site
I'm working on.  It's a two-level menu setup though, so I
want to have the
minor level have different style.
I've managed to get two levels in the menu ok, but for some
reason the first
item in the sub-level has all the characteristics of the top
level.   Can
anyone see what I've got wrong in the code?
The page is at http://auslegs.com.au/about/index.cfm

And the style sheet concerned is at
http://auslegs.com.au/styles/auslegs.css
The first sub-menu item should be "classic turned timber
lounge legs" - the
first item under the "Products" category.
The structure of the menu on the page is:


 Top level item
 Top level item
 Top level item
   
  Second level item
  Second level item
  Second level item
   

Top level item

Is anything wrong with this structure?  It works fine on
another site I
have.
Cheers
Mike Kear
Windsor, NSW, Australia
AFP Webworks
http://afpwebworks.com
p.s. I know it looks horrible right now. I want to get this
to work then
I'll do some pretty graphics for the menus to suit the site.
*
The discussion list for http://webstandardsgroup.org/
*
   



*
The discussion list for http://webstandardsgroup.org/
* 



*
The discussion list for http://webstandardsgroup.org/
* 



 

*
The discussion list for http://webstandardsgroup.org/
*

Re: [WSG] Rollover bug in Firebird 0.7

[Ryan Christie]

I see what your bug is though I can't put my finger on what is causing 
it specifically.

Your #sidebar h1 spec though is most likely not the problem associated 
with that area. I am curious as to why you have made multiple "Sidebar 
spacer" elements tagged as level 6 headlines. Besides presenting the 
problem of not being actual headings at all, I find their inclusion to 
be unnecessary. Your sidebar would in this case be better managed using 
actually  tags, with each section within it's own div and margined 
accordingly.

Additionally, your headings span from h1-h5, with h6's dispersed in 
between. A user viewing this without styles turned on will see 
consistently small "Sidebar spacer" headings, and ever-shrinking section 
headings. If I was such a user, I wouldn't know what exactly was going 
on. Consider using all h1's within their own boxed divs on the sidebar. 
Or, use classed versions of h1's to represent your headings. No header 
there is more important that any other, and should be marked up as such. 
I'll speak for Zeldman (also linked on your page), and he agrees. ;)

Now, all source errors set aside...

What appears to be happening is your image replaced "Sidebar spacer" 
things and actual headings for each section are slipping up on the page 
briefly on a link rollover. In switching between IE6 and Firebird 0.7 
nightly, your bullet positioning is not consistent between the two of 
them, and so I assume there are some necessary padding/margin values 
that haven't been set in your sheet. I am fairly positive it has to do 
with the spacing settings, as I don't know why else elements would move 
on your page.

Since the problems are not existent in two of your alt stylesheets, I 
would compare them side by side, property for property and determine all 
the differences. Once you know what's different, you can work from there.

Please, when you send out emails, include what you have tried to fix the 
problem, and above all at least explain what seems to be happening. The 
more information we get the more of use we can be in figuring out an 
alternate course of action.

-Ryan Christie
http://www.theward.net
Ben Webster wrote:

Hey there WSG crew,
 
I'm (fairly) new to the list - and it's great to hear the daily in's 
and out's of other developers strtuggling with similar issues.
 
I was wondering if anyone could shed any light on a stange bug I'm 
getting in Firebird 0.7 on a PC.
 
On one of my sites www.thesydneypost.com 
<http://www.thesydneypost.com> I'm getting a stange effect in the 
Pyrmont + Roseville styles when you rollover the links in the sidebar. 
I'm using one of the image-replacement techniques to display the images:

#sidebar h1 {
   padding: 15px 0 0 0;
   overflow: hidden;
   background-image: url("../i/lh_titles_suburb.gif");
   background-repeat: no-repeat;
   background-color: #f8f8f7;
   height: 0px !important;
   height /**/: 15px;
   font-size: 12px;
   }
Any ideas?

Benvolio 
--+
Ben Webster
Conversant Studios
0421 699 494
[EMAIL PROTECTED] <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
www.conversantstudios.com.au <http://www.conversantstudios.com.au>

*
The discussion list for http://webstandardsgroup.org/
* 

Re: [WSG] CSS book

[Ryan Christie]

Actually dude, I haven't seen a good book that can do that for you. I've 
seen books, but they sort of suck. I am working on an online 
tutorial/informational center for XHTML, CSS, and directions to at 
standards from. I'll keep you posted on development.

-Ryan

Taco Fleur wrote:

What is a really good book aimed at only CSS layout, and takes you 
from medium to advanced?
 
*Taco Fleur
*Tell me and I will forget
Show me and I will remember
Teach me and I will learn
 
*
The discussion list for http://webstandardsgroup.org/
* 

Re: [WSG] Browser Engine Standard???

[Ryan Christie]

You still have cell phones and PDAs to worry about - using too many of 
those nice features might mean you bust the view for others. Besides, 
with Microsoft being the corporate giant they are, do you really believe 
they will throw in the towel to a team of open source developers?

Bill Gates would roll over in his grave.

Taco Fleur wrote:

-
Unfortunately, while we do vaguely know what *most* of the
users use right now, we don't know at any point, for any
particular site, what those *specific* users are browsing with,
and what they will be browsing with in the future.
-
Is it really still vague? 
If we keep thinking like this, will we ever get a standard?

I realize years ago, it was crazy to say, "hey I will only code for Browser X", because there was such a variety used out there. But lately it has been quite obvious what the USERS are using (and once again let me stress out that that does not mean I agree with what they are using) the two browsers at the top are Internet Explorer and Mozilla, with Internet Explorer Leading. 
Cool, time to say bye bye to EVERY other browser that is not within this range, i.e. the ones that only have a share of 5% or less percent. Let the top two battle it out, i.e. let's see who the users will choose in the next two years, after that, bye bye number 2. One browser left, and we can all code for one browser (or engine/parser if they wised up and used the same backend but different front-end) and we can all finally start using those fancy features that we have stayed away from because they don't work in every browser.

;-))
Taco
*
The discussion list for http://webstandardsgroup.org/
* 



 

*
The discussion list for http://webstandardsgroup.org/
* 

Re: [WSG] Browser Engine Standard???

[Ryan Christie]

Taco-

I think it's more of a complex situation than that. I'm sort of sick of 
all the browser hoopla as well, and I've only been into designing for 5 
years. Back when I was a consumer in the browser wars, that was a good 
time as well - fun to kick back and watch the dust fly :)

I doubt there will ever be THE BROWSER 1.0 FINAL ... There's too much 
sharky business stuff that goes on behind the scenes for the browsers to 
all work the same. Without some sort of branding, there only would be 
one browser probably. I'm not sure why the browser wars were so damn 
violent - so if anyone with more knowledge of that stuff wants to send 
out a verbose email on/offlist to me I'll be happy to turn on sponge 
mode. As I see it, Netscrape VS Internut Exploder was simple brand name 
competition - technically, possession is 9/10's the law as they say. 
More market share, more branding awareness, more business.

Now, at least the browsers are starting to all adopt standards which is 
definitely less of a headache for us as designers and coders. Even 
though they all agree on the standards though, each browser has it's own 
agenda - even Mozilla's Firebird has its own special CSS element 
properties that can be toyed with to do different things. You can see 
them all when using the DOM inspector within the program and loading up 
Computed Style, they all start with -moz from the bottom of the styles 
list up.

The engine deal goes right in hand with the branding - because in order 
to set themselves apart from others, every browser will at least have 
their own tweaked version of a standard engine. I think that right now 
with the rise of standards the big dogs are going to start to flop out 
unless they can keep up with the open source development of the Mozilla 
team. And to their own credit, Netscrape's 7.1 browser is actually very 
pretty and works quite well. Of course, it is driven by Gecko - 
Mozilla's open source web engine.

I dread seeing Microsoft's next IE release in the upcoming year. After 
this long without an update at all, they better be damn well sweating 
over hot keyboards with a new built-from-scratch engine driving the 
circus along. If they still have that same old legacy code plopped in 
there from IE6 I'm giving up on them as far as hope is concerned completely.

Of course, given they still hold top market share, we'll still have to 
support their lousy browser.

-Ryan

Taco Fleur wrote:

Will there ever be such a thing as a Standard Browser Engine/Parser or 
what ever you want to call it?

12 years ago when I first started web design I was already sick of the 
differences between how browsers display and handle things, back then 
I figured that after some time (12 years maybe) everybody would get 
their act together and at least use a default engine/parser for every 
browser..

Whats the deal? Is anybody working on this, will it ever happen?

Why do so many designers still use and code for browsers that are not 
within the top highest browser market share?
Isn't it time to say, "we now know what the users use" (even though we 
don't agree with what they use) and completely forget about the rest?

If we all would do this and set our pride aside, I reckon we might 
have that dream we have come true!

Or am I just babbling away again, and talk about things I have no clue 
about??

*Taco Fleur
07 3535 5072*
Tell me and I will forget
Show me and I will remember
Teach me and I will learn
*
The discussion list for http://webstandardsgroup.org/
* 

Re: [WSG] form input

[Ryan Christie]

As far as I know you can't really target tags by their elements. Since 
the submit button is just a type="submit" input tag, the normal input 
rules will apply to it. I'd say go with your second style and remember 
that some of the properties will cascade down.. you may have to redefine 
certain properties in the CSS for the submit button to look like you 
want it.

I'd also give the form an ID because that those declarations will bleed 
throughout your entire site. This may not be a problem, but it 
potentially could be in the future if you added more forms that needed 
different style. Besides, it's just good practice to keep everything 
orderly :) I.E., if it is a Search form, you'd use search#form input, 
and use  for your tag.

Besides, that way is perfectly acceptable and very clean structure-wise 
- what exactly were you "after"?

Ryan
--
"Heck with kids - standards are our future."
Webmaster, http://www.theward.net
Taco Fleur wrote:

Is there some way that you can only target input elements with type 
SUBMIT?

Example;


form input
{
background-color: #FFCFCE;
border: 1px solid black;
font-weight: bold;
color: white;
width: 160px;
background-image: url(../image/buttonSubmit_background03.gif);
cursor: hand;
background-repeat: repeat-x;
}





  
  

This would apply the style over all INPUT elements, but I was 
wondering if it could be just applied to the input elements that have 
type SUBMIT or BUTTON?

I realize I could do it the following way, but thats not what I am after.


form input .submit
{
background-color: #FFCFCE;
border: 1px solid black;
font-weight: bold;
color: white;
width: 160px;
background-image: url(../image/buttonSubmit_background03.gif);
cursor: hand;
background-repeat: repeat-x;
}





  
  

*Taco Fleur
*Tell me and I will forget
Show me and I will remember
Teach me and I will learn
*
The discussion list for http://webstandardsgroup.org/
* 

Re: [WSG] website help, fixing problem with ie5

[Ryan Christie]

Try redoing the layout aspects of the CSS using a shell from 
http://www.inknoise.com/experimental/layoutomatic.php ... For 
educational purposes I would keep an old copy of your stylesheet 
settings to check for differences.

The only markup error I noticed was in your  declaration. You 
should declare it as follows:
http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"; xml:lang="en">
If that fixes the spacing problem, all the better ;) I'm just a trained 
monkey, and my master (W3C) says that's how the cookie crumbles.

I suspect that it would have something to do with margins or pad 
settings. If you do not define the margins or paddings in IE as zero 
explicitly, the browser will make up its own values and misbehave 
accordingly.

IE versions are really a tiresome ordeal to work with. I feel your pain.

Ryan
--
"Heck with kids - standards are our future."
Webmaster, http://www.theward.net
Hill, Tim wrote:

Hi, sorry to do this but I cant find the problem I am having.

The address is http://www.pinkforlife.info/new/home.html

My site is structured with;

A header div

A container div, that contains, a content (left), and nav (right)

A footer div

In ie5 there is a gap from the containing div to the header, and footer.

Margins dont seem to remove this. But if I add a border to the 
container div on the top and bottom, it removes the gap on the top.

I dont think it is a box model problem but I could be wrong. I am 
using XHTML transitional for my DTD.

Thanks for any help.

Tim Hill

Computer Associates

Graphic Artist

tel: +612 9937 0792

fax: +612 9937 0546

[EMAIL PROTECTED] 

*
The discussion list for http://webstandardsgroup.org/
* 

[WSG] A quick XHTMLquestion

[Ryan Christie]

I'm trying to move away from XHTML 1.0 Transitional 
into XHTML 1.1 or 1.0 strict. When I validate my pages as such, it tells me that 
the target attribute for 'a' tags no longer exists. Would using _javascript_ to 
open new browser windows on click thrus be acceptable? Is there a better way to 
achieve this using something other than JS that I'm not aware of?
 
BTW - my apologies about the Spam Arrest - Peter 
helped me clear that up ;)
 
 
 
Ryan
--
"Heck with kids - standards are our 
future."
Webmaster, http://www.theward.net