Do you know what percentage of people browsing the net use handhelds? I have been unable to find any statistics on it, but suspect its a very small number.
My mode of operation is to always keep in mind the law of diminishing returns when designing for a client as commercial realities must be paramount when trying to earn a living
So ...
1. Depending on the client ill aim for HTML 4 transitional or XHTML 1.0 transitional validation and complying to the spirit of web standards (no presentational tables etc and code that validates), or to the letter (code that validates). In both cases I will do my best to make it accessible.
2. Whatever design is decided upon i'll get it to work well on the newest mozilla, IE 4, 5, 5.5, 6, newest opera, see if it looks tolerable on Safari using Dan vine's icapture and in Netscape 4.08
3. Anything else is a bonus, eg: my personal site is table free, and scales from very small resoltions to very large with no problems (AFAIK) because I had the time to make it so.
However some clients are not willing for you to go the Nth degree of cross browser compatibility, ill do my best to convince them but in the end its their choice
-- Neerav Bhatt http://www.bhatt.id.au Web Development & IT consultancy
James Ellis wrote:
1. I have a multi-column layout... when I psuh the site to a layout for handheld I'll turn off the floats that handle the columns. The content will then cascade down the page. This will involve adding a new stylesheet and linking to it via a media attr, a user agent sniff or a hyperlink for the user.*****************************************************
2. I have a multi-column layout... when I push the site to a layout for handheld I'll have to change the markup so that the table rows have only one cell in them each. This will also affect the screen and print versions of the site (so I'll have to do mutiple markup for the same content).
Which one is easier and better in the long run?
faffing around with rowspans and colspans can be frustrating as well. The difference being that one method has a future, the other doesn't.
Cheers James
Neerav wrote:
hear hear .. multi-columnnar sites are much easier to do with a single wrap around table and work cross-browser than using a CSS "for the sake of it approach" creating multi column layouts and "faffing about" s=as Mike says
standards are all well and good, and where possible I have no problem with adhering to the letter and spirit of webs standards, but sometimes things like wrap around tables are indispensible.
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