'), but turning such technology loose on the WWW is still demonstrably a complete waste of time. Welcome to the mass market trailing edge. | You're focusing on one aspect of the WWW and parlaying that to into | a hopeful description of the whole thing in general. Doesn't look that way to me: focus, yes (do you focus on things you *don't* find remarkable?) but parlay, no. | Pretty loose if you ask me. Sounds like you're taking exception to an implied "there's nothing (else) new here." Tough to feel good about being on the trailing edge, right?;) | Besides, a text index of the WWW isn't all that surprising or | remarkable. Find a way to index all the NON-text material out there... | then you'll have something. There's plenty of research already going on. But what makes you think "silly human whims" and "money" are ready for it? Arjun Ray %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%% Some spammer wrote: > Cheap, fast web hosting available at http://www.bexleynet.co.uk Old internet saying. Fast, Cheap, Good. Pick Two. Paul Gregg -------- It is interesting that you bring this up. I was reading a project management book a while back, and it states something very similar that I have found to be an invaluable piece of information. When developing the plan for a project, only two of the following can be fixed, the other must vary. Quality, Timeline, and Cost. You know you will run into problems when your client tries to fix all three elements. My advice, don't take the job or get practicing your miracle muscles ;) In addition, the book I read suggested a fourth element, Scope. This created the condition that only three elements can be fixed, the fourth must vary. Just spewing information. CajunDave %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%% Hello to all I have been reading these articles about web page design with great interest. Why with great interest well I have made My sites Totally Accessible to all Not like the great many sites out there who not even take the trouble to try to do this in any way. I have found many sites that people like my self just cannot enter. That people who are Deafblind, Blind net users Even the ALT Tags on images are not on there sites. and you cannot find your way around them. Making a Site Accessible doesn't seem to be in the mind of many webmasters and Designers on the net. As long as they look good to the sighted hearing net user then it OK. But remember the net is not all just for the sighted hearing world, We all enjoy the net with it's vast information out there, but remember to try and KEEP it accessible to all so we all can learn new things and learn about each other. We are all in this and should be aware of what we should do and should not do when it comes to Web page design. If you would like to go to a sites which is accessible but not the best or most interesting one for the sighted hearing readers of this group. then try a site which I made myself <http://www.s55wilma.demon.co.uk> <http://www.deafblind.com> I do hope that you will find them of some use to you when you think about updating you site. and may try to make them accessible to ALL. I hope that you did not find this e-mail letter to boring. Just my little thought about this subject. all the very best to all on the group Yours -- The Brailler -------------------- Hello all again. and hi Paul Paul Clark wrote: >Not at all, thank you for sticking your head above the parapet, so to >speak. It's refreshing to hear from someone for whom this is a very >real requirement rather than a theoretical ideal. Sending letters to groups is not a thing I do very often. >I think your perspective would be enormously useful on these groups. >You mentioned lack of ALT attributes being a problem - that's the most >obvious one, I guess. I wonder could you list the other main things >that stop you using Web sites easily? There are plenty of documents >that describe it in theory, but I'd be interested in a direct personal >perspective. Well if you are interested, here I go A frame site is a right so and so to get around in. I cannot understand why sighted hearing people like these. But if a person really need to have a frame on there site they can quite easy have a No-Frames alternative. and they can try and make sure the No-Frames link is the first link in the frame with the initial focus. columns and some tables can be hard to read on web sites. Try style sheets to position graphics and text instead. Use descriptive text links that will make sense if read out of context. Very often a Deafblind or blind computer user will simply use a keystroke that moves the focus from link to link, especially when the text is in columns or formatted in such a way that makes the information confusing. >I take it from your description of yourself that you are using a Braille >reader - could you describe the technology involved here? I am using a braille display called Powerbraille made by blazie Engineering in the USA. It a 40 cell display, A braille cell is 1 letter in your printed world. the Braille display is put under the keyboard, the keyboard is just like your own but my keyboard has braille on it and not printed letters like your own. >Is it a >specialised browser, or a 'screen reader' running off a generic one >(e.g. Lynx). I am using the same software that many of you are uusing and to go on net I use MS explorer 4.1 but will be trying out 5 very soon. >Are there any particular problems that Braille output >causes, or solves (compared to speech output, say)?. I my self need to use a Braille display to access the net and my computer I not use speech software as it no use to me. I am a deafblind person. >Please excuse my >ignorance... I am happy to try and help you with your questions that is how we all learn. Remember there are many deafblind and blind people on the net. And we are customers too, so if we have no access to your web site then you are losing future customers. Here is a site that will help you a little to make sites accessible. Bobby Approved Site < http://www.cast.org/bobby/ > this page will help you to make a better site that will let all to have access to you web pages and just not the sighted hearing world. I do hope Paul and the other members of the group did enjoy a little of this letter. and I hope it will help you . all the very best to all yours James -- The Brailler -------------------- The Brailler <brailler@braille.freeserve.co.uk> wrote: : A frame site is a right so and so to get around in. : I cannot understand why sighted hearing people like these. Actually, it's primarily Web *authors* who like frames. Most Web *users* either don't care one way or the other, or dislike frames (some of the dislikes stem from technical limitations in the current frames model rather than intrinsic problems with the concept of frames). : Try style sheets to position graphics and text instead. Use descriptive : text links that will make sense if read : out of context. Very often a Deafblind or blind computer user will simply : use a keystroke that moves the focus from link to link, especially : when the text is in columns or formatted in such a way that makes the : information confusing. The point about text links making sense out of context is an important one for sighted users as well. All the available research seems to indicate that sighted users generally skim text rather than reading it thoroughly, and links stand out to them when they first skim a page. Link texts lose much of their impact if they're redundant or context-dependent (I remember seeing an (English-language) page written by a German author suggesting proper diction for link texts. There were some interesting items on her "words to avoid" list. One of those words was "available"; her argument was that since nobody links to resources that *aren't* available, all the word could do in a link text is take up space). : I am using a braille display called Powerbraille made by blazie : Engineering Did Blazie acquire the Powerbraille from another company? I vaguely remember it being from some other vendor (Telesensory?). Or are they simply a dealer for it? Eric Bohlman ---------------- Telesensory recently sold its products for the blind to Blazie. Telesensory kept (and is trying to focus on) its products for the partially sighted. Darin McGrew %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%% Daniel R. Tobias wrote: > catnip wrote: > > > > If purists are a gang, I'd like to know the colours so I can get a > > nifty t-shirt made (and a matching pocket protector of course...) > > Neat idea... If somebody were to put out a "HTML Purist Gang" shirt, > maybe I'd buy one. Any entrepreneurs out there interested in supplying > this? Interesting idea. A plain grey T-shirt with the text: <h1>Purist</h1> in black would do the trick ;-) Tim Fountain %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%% David Dineen wrote: > Burk Price wrote:: > >CSS also breaks gracefully. > > Bullshit. If a user with a non CSS-compliant browser goes to your > page, what will they see? Text stretched out from one side of the > screen to the other (hard to read), default background colour > (probably grey), default text colour (probably black), default font > (probably Times New Roman). It will look like any average website, > cicrc 1994. And if the user doesn't like what this looks like, he's free to change the default font, colors, and browser window width, or else download a newer browser that does support stylesheets. These are options he didn't have in 1994 (though I don't recall lots of grousing and griping back then about how horribly unreadable the Web was; there seems to be more griping about the Web going on in 1999, after 5 years of "improvements"). But in the meantime, the content of the page is just as readable and accessible as any Web site was in 1994. Daniel R. Tobias %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%% Push Me, Pull You http://www.around.com/push.html %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%% Boris Schaeling <Boris.Schaeling@gmx.de> did thusly spew forth: >Why do you think people don't upgrade? as someone who has access to the logs of a web server that gets a moderate amount of traffic in a day, it's easy for me to see that a fair chunk of people don't upgrade. by looking at the agent logs cross-indexed with the requesting IP's it seems that a clear pattern emerges: someone buys service from an all-in-one ISP (like AOL, or Erols, etc.). The ISP provides a customized browser - either one theyve written (the AOL's of the world) or one that they've modified to add their logo to (Erols, Bell Atlantic, etc.). The consumer gets this browser as part of their 'start up kit' and installs it on their computer. They then use this until: a) Windoze dies and they have to reload thier system; b) their ISP tells them to upgrade (usually by either a login popup or actually sending them the new software); c) they see some cool new feature in a friend's browser that they MUST have. Usually, due to how long a new browser takes to download (20-30MB at 28.8 - 56Kbps), most people avoid this like the plague. Where you see the most up to date users are in offices and people who have ISDN, ADSL, cable modems, etc. at home. So, until everyone everywhere has high speed access, or until we stop seeing code-bloat in browsers (yeah, thatll happen), we'll continue to see people operating well behind the latest revision. >I'd say it's only a minority that still uses NN2. pretty safe bet: minority is anything less than 50% and greater than 50% of current internet users have been using the internet for less time than 'NN -gt 2' or higher have been available. Thomas H Jones II ---------------- Joy Hamilton wrote: > [quoted out of order] > I am amazed almost daily how little people actually know about the Internet > and its potential. [...] At work (tech support for an ISP), I become familiar with all the latest goodies. Ignorance or unawareness is not the only reason for not "upgrading". As you mentioned, there are other reasons. > [...] > I would say most people don't upgrade becuase of the amount of time it takes > to download the program. And many people that I come into contact with are > just happy to finally be up and running on the Internet. [...] These would apply to me. For browsing, I use a 486DX33 with Win 3.1 and Navigator 3, with Java & JS turned off. If something's working well enough for me, I don't take the time to download extra stuff. I'm happy to be on the Internet. Everything's working fine for me. There's one other reason you didn't mention: cost. Sure, I could get MSIE 5.0 for free, but I'd have to get Win95/98, a bigger machine to run it, or add more memory, and definitely get a bigger hard drive. Apart from side-bar menus through frames, most of the goodies I've seen don't really add that much to my browsing experience. I'm certainly not going to spend another $2500 to view stuff like MouseOver changes in colour, etc. I'm not saying that the new technologies are bad, just that I'm not interested in viewing them. If your restaurant has walk-in and drive-through, fine. If it's drive-through only, well, I'm not buying a car just to eat there. As for style sheets, this could be the greatest thing since sliced bread. I'll probably upgrade eventually just for that. It's too bad they weren't implemented back in the Browser 2.x days. > I wish they would all catch up! In the meantime, just indulge me for a year or so until I've had a chance to save up some money for the upgrade! Willondon Donovan %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%% Pai Yili wrote: >However, this will not get the graphic to look like the work of a >professional. > You really need to make the graphic with the right tool. Xara >Webster, Xara 3D, Ulead Cool 3D, the list goes on and on. If you plan to >make professional websites, get tools that produce better results. One would think that what he needs is professional experiance/education, rather than a tool. Our graphics person can do wonderful things with MS Paint. REBUS %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%% "Jan Smith" writes: > Does using javascript in an HREF actually cause a problem? Under what > circumstances? [ cases reduced a little for brevity ] (1) <a href="javascript:do_something()"> This creates a link with undefined behaviour - such as doing nothing at all. Not a nice thing to inflict on your readers. Harmful. (2) <a href="some-normal-url" onclick="do_something(); return false"> For browsers where (1) is meaningful, this is exactly equivalent to it. For other browsers it will still do something reasonable. Therefore (2) is always preferable to (1). (3) <script> document.write('<a href="javascript:do_something()">') </script> Preferable to (1) in cases where the "some-normal-url" in (2) wouldn't make sense: non-Javascript readers won't be confused, but you still may have a problem with some JS-enabled browsers. Best for nice toys like a webpage calculator or spreadsheet. > Or is this more of a protest about mangling the original intent of HREF? HREF defines an anchor to another resource: a javascript resource in principle falls within that, so I really don't see it as "mangling the intent of HREF". The difficulty is that on the WWW, (1) causes grief to WWW users, and can be trivially fixed using (2), (3), or variants. -- Nick Kew %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%% <...> And remember, the Internet would probably not have taken off as quickly if it were sold to the people as the Marketing Superhighway. Lord knows we get enough marketing thrown at us already. -- Shawn K. Quinn %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%% New "feature" in Internet Explorer 5.0: IE5 assumes that short "404" documents are all the less-than-helpful default error messages, and provides its own hints on how to avoid getting a "404 Not Found" condition. If you have a custom ErrorDocument for "404 Not Found" and the document is less than 512 bytes long, then Internet Explorer won't display it. (This has been verified with IE5 for Win98 and IE5 for Solaris-2.x.) You will need to add more text to the custom 404 document to make it show up. Text such as We're sorry that you could not find the document you were looking for. Please check out the <A HREF="/">top-level index</A> of this site for more information. and enough other filler to get past the magic 512-byte limit. Joe Smith %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%% William G. Schlake wrote: > Sorry Charlie... you couldn't be further off the mark. The point > purists consistently miss because they like to keep their heads buried > firmly in the sand is the average web author simply isn't obsessed > over specs, portability or so-called degrade gracefully double talk. Who wants to be "the average web author"? The average web author can't HTML their way out of a paper bag. Obsessing with getting the job done well is what separates the pros from the rest. Miguel Cruz %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%% Jacqui Caren wrote: > IMHO we live to learn and > Alan is an expert in this field. It's a trick - just concentrate on answering the few topics where I know what I'm talking about, and avoid saying too much about the many where I don't ;-) Alan J. Flavell %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%% William G. Schlake wrote: > What tags don't NS and MS understand? > > Here list them: > > > Last time I looked (i.e., not including IE5) LINK, BDO, IFRAME, FIELDSET, LEGEND, LABEL, BUTTON, OPTGROUP, Q, TBODY, THEAD, TFOOT, umpteen attributes, correct implementation of OBJECT. If you widen the net to all the SGML stuff that should have come for free from the beginning: Multi-comment comment blocks, internal declaration subset entity definitions and references, notations, most SHORTTAG features, CDATA and other marked sections, RE suppression, correct implementation of OMITTAG minimisation, character entity refs... And before you whinge that this is all incomprehensible ancient history, most of these missing facilities solves a specific problem which bugs web authors to this day - for example "how to I include one file in another", "how do I stop < being treated as markup", "why do my table cells have whitespace around them". What's more it's all been in there since HTML Year Zero. Paul Clark ------------- > >What tags don't NS and MS understand? > >Here list them: OBJECT - not there or broken Q - not there at all DIV - not there or broken (in conjunctions with style sheets) TABLE - different types of support LINK - not there or broken STYLEs - very much broken in some versions SCRIPT - different implementations EMBED/APPLET - different implementations (Ever see how much work is involved in getting the Java Plug In to work with both IE and NS?) And this is only off the top of my head. I'm sure that others can provide more or pointers to the inconsistances for the *basic* HTML. Michael K. Neylon %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%% William G. Schlake <comments@hobsonsquare.com> wrote: : Every year major corporations spend millions of dollars developing : some truly creative commercials and pay a hefty fee to have them run : during the super bowl. They could save a bundle if they just had their : message scroll up the screen. Wow, I wonder why they don't. Because EtOH inhibits ADH, that's why. Those Super Bowl TV commercials, to do their job, need to grab the intention of someone whose brain is devoting most of its energy to processing rather urgent signals coming from his bladder, and who has gotten up from his seat and is heading to the bathroom to deal with those signals. Under those circumstances, it takes a real sensory blitz to get his attention. But nobody views a Web site under those circumstances. The very fact that someone is viewing a Web site means that the site already *has* the viewer's attention. It doesn't *need* to shout "Hey! Look at Me!" (HLAM) at the viewer, and doing so is more likely to interfere with the viewer's enjoyment of the site than enhance it. No, the Web is not at all like TV. TV programs and commercials *have* to be extremely banal and put style over substance because they're intended to be viewed by people whose attention is elsewhere. The main reason the typical American spends far more time watching TV than reading books is *not* that he prefers pictures to words. It's that he can watch TV while doing other things, but reading demands his full attention. Web "surfing," unlike TV watching, is a "full-attention" activity. And yes, some people do indeed seek an "experience" when they go to a Web site, but it's almost always an "active viewing" experience, where the viewer wants an experience controlled by him, not a "passive viewing" experience like TV that's controlled by someone else. An effective TV commercial delivers a message to an unengaged mind. An effective Web marketing effort delivers a message to an engaged mind. The techniques involved don't overlap much, if at all. "Catch them while they're getting up to piss" simply doesn't work on the Web. Eric Bohlman %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%% Steve Pugh wrote: > John Forrest Tomlinson wrote: > >I'd like visitors to my site to see a tiled background image if > >possible, but want to specify a background color in case they are > >using a text-only browser or have image-loading turned off. Can I use > >both background and bgcolor in the body tag? Is there any problem with > >this? > > Yes you can have both attributes, in fact you should have both (with > the bgcolor set to the predominate colour of your background image) > for those cases where image loading is switched off or the background > image fails to load for some reason. AAPOI, the machine I've got downstairs will anti-alias *all* text to the colour the bgcolor is set to, ignoring the background image. If an author uses a predominately red backgroud image (sic), doesn't declare a bgcolor, and your default is grey; you'll get "halo effects" around all letters which really does look awful. Tim Fountain %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%% Alan J. Flavell sigs: -- "Dickens was abusing cinematic techniques before the medium had been invented" - BBC2 arts prog. -- ( ) Yes, I want to restart my computer now. (o) No, I would prefer a decent operating system. -- ############################ ### VORSICHT! ### ### freilaufende Trolls ### ### Bitte nicht füttern! ### ############################ -- Netscape Compos<del style="display:none;">t</del>er -- "...in order to have the least helplessly submissive experience" - Todd Fahrner %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%% "I'm a perfectionist because I'm fussy in what I do. You're a nitpicker because you live to find fault." William G. Schlake %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%% William G. Schlake (comments@hobsonsquare.com) wrote: : On Tue, 20 Apr 1999 22:39:32 GMT, "Dan McGarry" : <blather@moodindigo.com> wrote: : >2) What is this so-called purist credo? I've seen many attempts to : >characterize it in one way or another, but I haven't seen a single : >definition that reached any reasonable level of consensus. That fact should : >give us pause for thought. : It isn't difficult at all and it should give one pause for thought : indeed. : A purist is a born nitpicker. : A purist obsesses over trivial issues at nauseum. : A purist is more concerned about other people's pages then his own and : will loudly quack, yell and bellyache every time he stumbles unto a : site that doesn't meet with his approval. : A purist MUST find fault and will go out of his way looking for it. : : A purist MUST try to correct not only what other people do on THEIR : web sites but is prone to also "correct" what other people post to : newsgroups being unwilling for anyone to freely express an opinion : contrary to his own without needing to attack it. Hell, purists are so : snooty it is common for one purist to need to "correct" fellow : purists! : A purist naturally thinks he is superior to everyone else not just on : HTML matters...EVERYTHING! : A purist can't admit he's wrong. Never! : Need I continue? I think not. Everyone of the people that just must : "argue" with me on a regular basis exhibit most and some ALL of the : traits I ticked off. : Rather sickening isn't it. I am a purist; but I am not as described by Schlake above. Since there is some doubt about what a purist is I shall elaborate what I think a purist is and why I should feel honoured to be referred to as a purist. I came to writing HTML after some decades of programming. The _first_ thing programmers learn is that a program that is not syntactically correct will not give any results at all. The second thing they learn is that without computer assistance it is almost impossible to write a syntactically correct program, and that getting the syntax right is a pre-requisite to getting anything else done. So writing a computer program is an interative process of getting rid of syntactic errors. Compared with writing a computer program of a thousand lines, embedding HTML into a document is relatively trivial, but programmers know that even such trivial tasks cannot be completed by most people without error, consequently expect to get things wrong, and prefer to use computer assistance to make corrections. So naturally when I started to write HTML I looked for the computer assistance to remove both the careless errors, and the errors I had made due to misunderstanding aspects of the language. So, my background made me want to _validate_ formally, the HTML I had written, and I was surprised that browsers didn't come with an integral syntax checker that produced line by line error messages like a compiler. As a programmer I am interested in portability. I want a program that I have written in FORTRAN or C or Pascal or PERL or C++ to work on any platform that supports these languages. Recently I had to revive some programs I had written in 1987 to modify them and re-use them. I was very glad that they were written in ANSI/ISO Pascal, and compiled and ran on different hardware, under a different operating system, and 12 years on from when they were written. This could only happen because I used software that satisfied an internationally agreed standard. My experience as a programmer has taught me: i) The need to validate even simple code ii) The value of standardisation of computer software. So that's where I come from. I want to write code that is correct, and I want to write code that is guaranteed to work in any software environment that purports to support it. Then I can be sure that the code that I write will do what I intended it to do when I wrote it. Notice that I haven't written a word about content, but only about the environment in which I am predisposed by my experience to expect to operate. That's why I support standards, and why I would prefer other people to support them as well, because then I can be sure that my software will compile and run their programs, my standard browser can read their standard documents _every_ time. The next question to be addressed is _What can the web offer that other media cannot?_ There is no point in publishing something on the web that is better published as a book. For me, the principal innovation is hypertext. So, we have a medium that offers a new way of linking documents. This alone is a wonderful boon, offering the opportunity to mechanise the making of concordances in literature. This is a tool of great power in scholarship offering a textual microscope that allows texts to be compared quickly and in great detail, and it's so easy to do. I set up a webpage for my own interest that has automated querystrings and drives a little cgi-bin script to return indices to related documents. This is a feasibility study, not an all-singing all-dancing commercial website, but it is an example of what the web is _uniquely_ capable of offering. The web also has the potentiality to become the greatest public library in the world, where information is freely disseminated to an immense audience. But then, people realise that they can make money, and the innocent dreams of altruism and scholarship fade and are replaced by blatant, greedy hucksterism, the commercial attack on standards to tie users into using proprietary software, the provision of non-standard baubles to infatuate the superficial, the flashy, the ignorant. As a public-spirited person I regret this, so I am a purist in terms of what the web is used for. I have tried to explain to those mad-with-greed supporters of the big two generators of ipso facto non-standard standards, but their values and mine are incommensurate. I regret that they are winning. I don't feel superior to Schlake, but I do know that we have nothing in common because I don't spend hour after hour typing bile, and would certainly avoid his company if I were ever in the position to meet him face-to-face. I'm sorry for him because despite the patience of the other posters he cannot understand that those who feel that the commercial processes that he supports so vigorously are undermining the concept of the greatest _public_ library in the world. On second thoughts, perhaps he can understand it but doesn't care...somebody put the torch to the library of Alexandria. In one respect I am not a purist. Every computer language, even seriously bondage-and-discipline languages like Pascal, have unforeseen, deprecated usages that allow the rebellious programmer to circumvent the plans of the language designer and make the computer do what s/he wants it to do. So I have no qualms about using tables for layout, for making typographic images, and using them for initial letters, or doing any damn thing I please, provided only that the documents validate. This is a long posting, one that has been waiting to be written for a long time. I know that other people have different views about what it takes to be a purist. These are mine, and putting my money where my mouth is, here is my purist website: http://www.abdn.ac.uk/connexion/ John O. %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%% <twilight zone> %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%% mlau@iohk.com (Just Another Miserable Soul) wrote: >I have posted this question for twice before, and I don't think I have >made myself clear with the question. I wanted to have a very large >background and not have it re-tile, for example, I would like to do >something like this site does : http://www.olivemedia.com/index1.html They created a really large image (Photoshop indicates the image occupies slightly more than 2 meg, once the jpeg is expanded in memory) such that you don't see it tiling. If you had a display with enough resolution, you would be able to open your browser enough to the point where the image would tile. In my opinion, this is a bad thing. They succeeded in having their background appear to be static, but at what cost? Try looking at their page on a slower machine without much memory, and you will notice a real performance problem. Scrolling on their page is noticeable on my machine, when I compare it to other pages that do not contain such large graphics. I use style sheets on my page (http://www.mmwalks.com/) to get a similar effect *if the browser supports style sheets*. <style type="text/css"> BODY { background-image: url(images/site/footprints1.jpg); background-repeat: no-repeat; background-attachment: fixed; background-position: center; } </style> There's a catch. When I view my page in Netscape 3, I see no background. Netscape 4 does not have enough CSS support to keep the background image stationary while scrolling. The effect appears best in IE4. (I prefer Netscape 3 for my own personal use. That's what I use for most browsing.) But...I don't *need* a background image. I'm perfectly happy with having different browsers render my site in different ways. I find this better than forcing an unnecessarily large picture down somebody's virtual throat. :) mmwalks@yahoo.com http://www.mmwalks.com/ %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%% On Sat, 24 Apr 1999, Bill Baker wrote: > Is CSS fairly compatible with older browsers? Of course: it's 100% compatible with older browsers, they ignore it entirely. It's the newer browsers which are the problem, because they interpret it wrongly, in so many different ways. > We are considering using > some of the features but wish our pages to be accessible by most web > users. The word "but" puts the situation back to front. Migrating to CSS is the way to re-claim _accessibility_. You may wish to retain some of the deprecated HTML3.2 presentation-like markup for the time being though, so that non-CSS browsers don't look as bad as they've been designed to be. Alan J. Flavell %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%% Mike Kern <mikekern@ix.netcom.com> wrote: > I am the manager of a web site for a television station, where > we have a lot of viewer interaction via e-mail. What possibilities > are there for databasing, or warehousing, all of the e-mails > received for some type of data mining or leveraging of this > information? Can any of you think of creative uses for this type > of technology? C'mon, Mike, you work for a TV station and you're not thinking 24-7 about marketing? ;) Okay, the rest of my message will be applicable to any business, not just TV. I'll start with a caveat: unless the people whose e-mail addresses you have gave you those addresses fully aware that they were going to be used for a marketing purpose, and *wanting* them to be used for a marketing purpose, they are only useful for "internal use" - figuring out aggregate stats about different things - if even for that. If you use them in any "external" manner and people find out, the absolute best you can hope for is alienation. Protests, boycotts or lawsuits are not unlikely. That said, leveraging e-mail is definitely a Good Thing. Just do it in a manner that lets the users control whether they (even begin to) get it, and benefits them. Set up a mailing list that people can subscribe to[1] and unsubscribe from[2] at will. Tell them up front what kind of information they'll get. Tell them that there'll be small quantities of ads mixed in. Tell them how often it'll come out. Wham-o, you've got a great marketing tool that requires almost no work on your part to maintain. [1] The process of subscribing should be relatively easy, but should, no, *must* contain a confirmation step, so that people can't go around subscribing other people for kicks. [2] The process of unsubscribing should be at least as easy as the process of subscribing. Once you've got it up and running... gee, what kind of stuff would people want to hear from your company? Information and times on upcoming specials? Information on community events that you're sponsoring, or where your personnel will be making public appearances? Information on contests, charitable projects, etc? Do you have food drives, or toy drives at the holidays? One more way to get the word out. If you're in the media, leave a little space somewhere in the message for an advertiser... maybe at the bottom it'll say "This week's newsletter brought to you by Joe's Bar and Grill at 40th and Market - stop by to try our new Barbecue Squidburger!" or whatever. (Of course, Joe's would *pay* you for this... ;) As long as people only get the mail if they've _asked_ for it, and stop getting it when they don't want it any more, they will love you to little bitty pieces, worship the ground you walk on, generally think you're great, and complain if you don't send it out on time. Dan (been there, done that, got 7500+ people who _ask_ for the ads) Birchall %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%% Mark Evans wrote: >Is it really so difficult to write a CGI program >which takes the form, makes some sense of it, >sends an email, then sends a page back saying >"Ok sent that stuff"? Yes, it is relatively difficult. It would also be reinventing the wheel, usually. Normally it is sufficient to know how to _use_ a CGI script when one's goal is something as common as that. Probably there's such a script made available by one's ISP. If not, one could use a remotely hosted service. And if one decides to use one's "own" script for the purpose, it is usually best to _find_ a good script and install it, and perhaps make some enhancements. Not really HTML topic, but it seemed necessary to try to clear things up. The usual advice "use CGI" does _not_ mean "write a CGI script", any more than the advice "use a graphics program" means "write a graphics program". Jukka Korpela %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%% Stacey Capps wrote: >Wow. You must have a REALLY slow machine. That background image is only >19k, due to the fact that the site creators used extreme JPEG compression >on it. The page, as a whole, is still well within conventional bandwidth >limits for site designers. It is less than 30k all tallied together. There are two issues: how big the file is and how big the image is. Two two are not the same. The first is impacted by how well the image compresses. 19k isn't bad. The bandwidth of the file travelling across the wire is not a problem. The second is more troublesome. According to Photoshop, an 860x860 24-bit color image is 2.12M. 860 x 860 = 739,600 pixels x 3 bytes/pixel = 2,218,800 bytes / 1024^2 bytes/meg = 2.116M...or 2.12, as Photoshop indicated. This is the size of the image. Not how big the file needs to be to transfer the picture, but how much memory the computer needs to decompress the image. All they really needed was a ~400k image of the olive, and they could have set the background color to the color they wanted. I noticed this first with a site that was using a 3.5M image for a background. Whenever I went to that site, my browser always slowed down just a little. Not that much, but enough to be noticeable. When I closed their site, everything was back to normal. I created a 3200x3200 gif that was mainly just one color. 3200 x 3200 x 1 byte/pixel = 10 meg. The file itself was 8k. This really makes scrolling in my browser noticeable. :) Try it...create a picture like this in Photoshop and save it as a gif, and then try using it as a background. mmwalks@yahoo.com http://www.mmwalks.com/ -------- > The second is more troublesome. According to Photoshop, an 860x860 24-bit > color image is 2.12M. 860 x 860 = 739,600 pixels x 3 bytes/pixel = > 2,218,800 bytes / 1024^2 bytes/meg = 2.116M...or 2.12, as Photoshop > indicated. If you think that's bad, take a look at this 43 byte GIF (in hexadecimal so it can be inspected in the clear): 47 49 46 38 39 61 FF FF FF FF F0 00 00 FF FF FF 00 00 00 21 F9 04 01 00 00 00 00 2C FF FF FF FF 01 00 01 00 00 02 02 24 0A 00 3B Only a 43 byte download (plus HTTP headers), but most browsers require nearly 12 Gigabytes to decompress it, yet it actually contains only one transparent pixel. If transparency is not required it could be reduced by another 8 bytes. I call this file "nullzilla.gif". I don't know enough about the JPEG standard yet to create an equivalent image. greg@apple2.com %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%% #include <stdlib.h> #include <stdio.h> main() { int ch; while ((ch = getchar()) != EOF) { switch(ch) { case '&': printf("&"); /* & */ break; case '<': printf("<"); /* < */ break; case '>': printf(">"); /* > */ break; default: printf("%c", ch); /* other character */ } } } %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%% Iain Hallam wrote: >Is there a way to set the background colour of a textarea (or, for that >matter, a text input)? Not in HTML, but such things can be suggested in CSS. See http://www.hut.fi/u/jkorpela/forms/present.html for some notes on current browser support. Jukka Korpela %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%% What's that site running? http://www.netcraft.com/ %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%% Malkag1 wrote: > > I am interested in passing my college course, so I need to know how to design a > website.Interested in finding the info on the web. Try: http://www.w3.org/ http://www.hut.fi/u/jkorpela/www.html http://www.htmlhelp.com/ http://www.htmlhelp.com/faq/html/all.html http://www.useit.com/ http://www.webpagesthatsuck.com/ http://goodpractices.com/ http://css.nu/ http://validator.w3.org/ http://www.cast.org/bobby/ And if that's not enough: http://www.altavista.com/cgi-bin/query?text Veronica Karlsson %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%% For a quick paste-and-validate, I recommend http://www.htmlhelp.org/tools/validator/direct.html Alan J. Flavell %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%% TeraRam wrote: > > I would like to know for what is XML, XLS, MathML, SVG, DOM? > Where can I find something about them? > & why do they exist, for what? XML (eXtensible Markup Language) is a generic language for describing structured data. XSL (eXtensible Stylesheet Language) is a style-sheet language written in XML. 'XLS' is a typo! MathML (Mathematical Markup Language) is a language for description of mathematical formulae. SVG (Scalable Vector Graphics) is a language for describing resolution independent, vector-based graphics. DOM (Document Object Model) defines the interface from a scripting language (such as Javascript) to the objects described by an markup language (HTML, or any XML-based format) For all of these, I recommend going directly to the source: http://www.w3.org Paul Clark %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%% In article <7gfdag$5sd$1@nnrp1.dejanews.com>, mark7341@my-dejanews.com wrote: >When printing a B/W line drawing image >or a grayscale image on an inkjet printer, is >there any way to get rid of "the jaggies"? Nope, except that if your image is anti-aliased grayscale rather than B/W bitmap, you can get "the blurries" instead. A 72-dpi image looks acceptable onscreen, but will always print poorly. Accept the WWW as a screen-based medium; that browsers print at all is merely incidental and occasionally handy as a memento of a site visit. If your audience needs hi-res line art to print, offer download links to appropriate file formats (perhaps Postscript or EPS, but not GIF or JPEG). -- --- Lanny Chambers %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%% Subject: Re: Help!! Date: Wed, 28 Apr 1999 18:15:49 -0400 From: Shane McWhorter <ShaneM@Cygnus.com> Newsgroups: comp.human-factors Greg Brack wrote: > I hope that someone here can offer me some help, I bought a monitor off > of my friend and I cannot get it to work at higher than 640x480 > resolution it is a Sony CPD-1320 if someone out there knows where I can > get the driver for this I would appreciate it. We did this for a project in a Cognitive Psychology grad course I took years ago. From what I recall, it had something to do with working memory and attention limitations. Have you tried developing a user interaction model? %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%% WYSIWMPUCBWPG -- "What you see is what most people using common browsers would probably get." WYSINWOGOTWWW (what you see is not what others get on the World Wide Web) %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%% FM <dankang@usa.net> wrote: > What sort of tools are available for site management? [...] > Linux programs are most welcome, as that's the primary OS > I'll be using, but I would appreciate other tools as well. There are a number of HTML preprocessors written in Perl, including HTMLPP <http://www.imatix.com/html/htmlpp/>. There are Linux binaries for version 1.1 of James Clark's SP suite <http://www.jclark.com/sp/>, but I'd recommend building version 1.3 from source. SP includes nsgmls, the validator I use; it also includes a number of other tools that you may find useful. Combine an HTML preprocessor and nsgmls with makefiles and custom Perl scripts as needed, and you've got a pretty good system for site management. -- Darin McGrew %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%% Disclaimer: TEDesign can not, and will not be held responsible for riots, acts of god, civil wars, speeding tickets, criminal acts against family members, random acts of violence, slaughtering of small defensless animals, poor television reception, burning and/or razing of public libraries, skin cancer, low academic achievment, or alien abduction. %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%% A Correspondent writes: "MS are getting worse and worse, and they don't seem able to help themselves. Sooner or later, I'm convinced, people are going to get sick of software that comes with a designer minefield as a non-optional feature. Let's hope there are still some competitors left by then." %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%% There is no way to flow text inside an area of an image[*] without employing a Java applet which has its own page rendering engine (which is a non-viable solution). Cutting up images with tables or using layers or CSS positioning requires that you give up the flowing of text and make (generally false) assumptions on font size and window width. You'd have to encode the text into the image (supplying identical ALT text), and even then you give up even more flexibility. It isn't fun redoing images because of a change in enclosed text copy. There is a thread about this in comp.infosystems.www.authoring.stylesheets where some type of bounds mask is suggested for addition to a possible CSS3 standard which could be used to hint to browsers the internal shape of an image and allow for text flow incursions into the image's bounding rect (which essentially would no longer be a rectangle). Fallback to older CSS implementations and CSS-unaware browsers would be to use the image's rectangular bound. [*] If you want to position text within an image using CSS positioning, you still can only have the text in a rectangular box. You can't do it if you want it to wrap to a curving margin. A text box positioned atop the image still has rigidly vertical left-right bounds. greg@apple2.com %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%% Tel <Tel33@NOSPAMbigfoot.de> wrote: : And besides, I always thought websites are being developed with a : specific target audience in mind... you certainly wouldn't want to Yes, websites are generally developed with a specific target audience in mind. The fallacy you're falling into, though, is the notion that that target audience can be meaningfully defined in terms of browsing situations or sensory capabilities. Simple analogy: TV commercials are almost always developed and deployed with a specific target audience in mind. But that target audience is *never* defined by what brand of TV set the viewer is using, or what size TV screen he has. Restaurants almost always target their menus and decor toward specific groups of diners. But those groups are *never* defined by the modes of transportation they take to get to the restaurant. Statements like "We're targetting this beer ad toward viewers with 25-inch Panasonic TV's" and "We're coming up with a menu for sport-utility vehicle owners" would come off as loonier than Looney Tunes. Yet they're no different, conceptually, than targetting a Web site based on the technology used to view it rather than the interests of the viewers. Eric Bohlman %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%% Great HF-lesson in the Washington Post yesterday: www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/WPlate/1999-05/08/151l-050899-idx.html Five male journalists who write about cars had tested the *Acura Navigation System*. All of them, she said, did the same thing. "What is is with you guys?," she demanded. "Why do you have to challenge it? Why do you ask it for instructions, and then decide to go your own way? That is not the way it's supposed to work. You are supposed to follow the system. It is not supposed to follow you." Jorn Barger %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%% Actually, as a designer, there's a lot to be said for using the worst browser you can find, instead of the best. You'll have a much better appreciation of the web experience that your clients and readers will have. Diane Wilson %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%% Steve Pugh wrote: >catnip wrote: >>Steve Pugh wrote: >>>I've got five Netscapes, two Internet Explorers, Opera, Mosiac, >>>HotJava, Ariadna, Oracle Power Browser, UdiWWW, Lynx, Act and the >>>WebTV simulator on my PC. >> >><html_poker> I'll see your browsers and raise you a >>PalmTop.</html_poker> > >I'll see you're palmtop (people in this studio have been known to look >at web sites on Psions and Nokias) and then I'll raise you two >different speech browsers (sadly both trial copies expired and I >haven't talked the bean counters into buying us a copy of one or the >other yet). Hang on a minute...I need to look through my purse to see if I can keep up... catnip %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%% In <374857b8@cs.colorado.edu>, Tom Christiansen <tchrist@mox.perl.com> wrote: | It's a sorry job being a Standards guy (a "Standardist") when most | people don't realize that Standards even exist, or why. It's a bit more complicated than that, I think. <URL:http://www.rit.edu/~exb1874/mine/kipling/sons_of_martha.html> There are many many more Sons of Mary than Sons of Martha. | They just take whatever their crummy wysiwig fleeceware puts out Because, for the most part, they are Sons of Mary. They anoint and entitle themselves to believe that they are the worthy beneficiaries of the "fact" that it shall be the job, the duty, the calling, the obligation, yea verily the apodictic destiny of some Son of Martha to have Gotten It Right - for the sake of these same Sons of Mary, of course. | It's tempting but ultimately unjust and ineffective to levy blame | on the users. There are two categories of users: users of fleeceware, and users of crippleware. Fleeceware serves to feed crippleware. Once the process is understood how users of crippleware came to their sorry situation, it should come as no surprise that there are users of fleeceware. In either case, however, a user absolved of responsibility is what being a Son of Mary is all about. | Instead, the conscientious Standards person should mount a multi- | pronged attack against the root cause to fight the War Against | Bastardization. The root cause is ignorance of technology. This is easily exploited to foster a cargo cult attitude towards products: it doesn't matter how good or bad the engineering of these products are, as long as they're *impressive*. After that initial intimidation, the subsequent entropic waste is a simple matter of letting hype, hoopla and appeals to vanity work their usual magic. Jump on that bandwagon and keep ahead of the Joneses! | The first step is to go for the distributors of these Bastardizations. The distributors, or the disseminators? Consider the possibility that the manifestly ignorant nevertheless deem themselves "informed". How did *that* circumstance come about, and how does it perpetuate itself? The "education" of the ignorant is also a business. | You can't blame simple users for getting hooked, but you can blame | the pushers, the Bastardizors. It takes two to tango. Neither can you prevent the unscrupulous from pandering to the ignorant, nor can you rescue technology from abuse. | This is hard, because it often means dealing with people whose goals | are diametrically opposed to interoperability and accessibility. | They want to generate something that works only with their own stuff. | They want to lock users into dependency on their drugs and destroy a | free and open society. That's why MS-HTML exists, you'll recall. And that's why <FONT> and <CENTER> and <BLINK> and "Composer" came to exist, too. The market for MS-HTML was created - indeed, proved - by another entity, in a media-fueled blitz of frenzied adulation. Where there has been carnage, are vultures at all surprising? | Because it's so difficult to fight directly against those who are | both Evil and Rude in the classic sense of the term, alternative | strategies must be devised. The Evil and Rude are also just symptomatic - they're simply cashing in on a situation created by the real problem. | These include working to make sure that the Standards adequately | address the technology in question, The standards do, only nobody is paying attention. More accurately, few are being given any reason to pay attention. | disseminating information about existing Standards, The scope for convenient misinformation is vast. Disseminate as much as information as you please, it could still be for nought. A golf weekend for a few well-placed journalists is all it takes to set massive counter-dissemination afoot... | developing validation suites and style guides, [and] prominently | publishing lists of non-conformant software and sites to allow peer | pressure and public opprobrium do its work to bring down the | Bastardizors. All of this falls under the rubric of information dissemination also. The point is not the need to disseminate, but the channels through which the dissemination will have to occur. | The other thing for a Standards-ist to do is to gently educate the | ingenues of the net about the tremendous value of Standards. Most ingenues these days have already been primed to the purportedly tremendous value of other things; in fact, that's why they're on the net at all... | Wean them off the destructive drug that Bastardizors have hooked | them on. Show them how it's hurting them. Show them how much better | their lives can be once they've gone clean, once they've kicked the | habit. Point out to them that without RFCs, we'd be nowhere now. | That without standard rules of traffic, we wouldn't be able to drive | safely. You might also note that [without] standards in human | discourse, we couldn't even communicate. But what if "they" don't care? It's simply a fact that many of them don't. Making them the target of an advocacy isn't going to achieve much. And even though demonstration is better than advocacy, the benefit in terms of standards will be to only those who do care. The point here for the "Standardist" is to take a hard look at what in fact *is* standardizable, and abandon the rest to chaos. In engineering terms, the operative issue is damage control. No film at 11. Arjun Ray %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%% http://www.sidaway.demon.co.uk/skeptic/sockpuppets.txt %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%% Miguel Cruz wrote: >> Miguel, look in any mirror. What's looking back is a hypocrite and a >> pretty damn sanctimonious one at that. > >Mirrors are like web browsers. Just because that's what you see in yours, is >no guarantee that it's what I'll see in mine. Ah...you have a magic mirror then that distorts the true image. Mine is just the simple reflective variety. Miguel's morning ritual: Mirror, mirror on the wall, who's the smartest poster of them all? Is it Alan, is it Schlake, tell me quick and don't pontificate! Tell me mirror, what do you see, damn you mirror, better be good to me! Is my image some bloated view, dare to tell me if that's true? I'm I not the expert I claim to be, please now say the truth to me! Mirror, mirror on the wall, what's the matter, why do you stall? Tell me now that I am damn smart, not just another newsgroup fart. Mirror, mirror on the wall, do I not always stand so tall? Mirror, mirror why do you twitch, am I just a son-of-a-bitch? Please, mirror tell me now, am I'm a fool, if so how? William G. Schlake %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%% Alan J. Flavell sig: -- Now if someone will just tell me how to nuke this demented paperclip... %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%% Subject: [OT] Moronization (was: constructive idea...) Date: 18 Jun 1999 01:57:02 -0500 From: aray@nmds.com (Arjun Ray) Newsgroups: comp.infosystems.www.authoring.html Followup-To: alt.dev.null [ Off-topic. Please note followups. ] In <929683026.265.31@news.remarQ.com>, "REBUS" <rebus@acces(1).com> wrote: | Ha!. Now that's funny... Perhaps only up to a point. | or was it ironic...maybe moronic... Interesting twist. Recently, I saw a thread (in a different NG) with 5 posts involving 4 people, all of whom were using (various versions) of Outlook Express. Post 1: Individual A posts a 3 line flame taking up 69 lines, using the usual multipart/alternative atrocity to duplicate everything in a blizzard of pseudo-HTML. Post 2: Individual B responds with a 1-line rejoinder, a blank line, and another line saying "stop posting HTML". This takes 87 lines, because ... yup, you guessed it. Post 3: Individual C (using the oldest version of OE) posts to point out this gaffe. Mercifully, this post is not multipart/alternative. Nevertheless, the 2-line chiding takes 32 lines of material to convey. Post 4: Individual D posts to point out that Individual B may not have been aware of posting the duplicated HTML "alternative". This 2 line protest takes up 41 lines. Post 5: Individual B uses 54 lines to post a 6 line denial, claiming awareness and arguing "why should I have to make any effort, when my NG reader defaults to reply in the same format, when it's the other guy who started it". Never mind that Individual C had cluefully *set* his defaults to do the "right thing". So, that was at least two ironies. The really fascinating aspect, however was that all 5 posts were in the same "jeopardy" style of "the answer before the question": a few lines of content at the top followed by a comprehensive quote of the previous article. Makes you wonder... :ar -- Moronization: a form of acculturation where people are encouraged to anoint themselves with the supposed benefits of a technology without understanding the engineering (or lack thereof.) %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%% Andreas Somogyi wrote: ++ ++ Just out of curiosity: I know what a Turing test is (hey - Bladerunner ++ is one of my fav movies after all, and I've read all Gibson's books at ++ least three times! ;-) ) but I have absolutely no idea what a Turing ++ machine is. Can somebody please explain? A Turing Machine consists of a machine with two parts. An FSA (finite state automaton) and an infinite tape, with a tapehead that can read or write symbols to the tape. The TM only knows about a finite set of symbols. A TM is capable of doing the following: 1 read the symbol currently under the head. 2 write a symbol to tape, on the position the head currently is. 3 move the tape one symbol to the right. 4 move the tape one symbol to the left. 5 change state. Everything that is calculatable is calculatable on a TM. In fact, modern day computers are less powerful than a TM, due to their finite memory. Abigail %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%% Alan J. Flavell wrote: > >What's the "main pane" on a palmtop browser, or an indexing robot, or a >speaking thingy? ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ Now there's a highly technical term. I'd better jot that down. You academic blowhards and your techno-babble.... ;-) catnip %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%% Stew Dean (stewnews@webslave.dircon.co.uk) wrote: : I'm don't know what experience you have had with big sites but I'm : sure if you've had to do one you are aware of just what a nightmare : navigation can be. It's one of those things that appears to be easy : until you have to do it. The aim is to get the user to any point in : the site in 3 clicks and not confuse them along the way . A great part of the reason for this is that every site designer seems to want to create a navigation interface that's "friendlier" than the one already built in to browsers. The problem with this thinking is that every designer winds up creating a *different* interface in the process, so as soon as the poor user gets the hang of navigating one site, he/she has to start over when he/she goes to another site. Worse, you wind up with a bunch of interfaces which are *almost* alike, which is even less friendly because it puts the user in a position where he *thinks* he knows how to navigate a particular site, but he's really thinking of some other site's almost-but-not-quite-indentical navigation scheme. The Macintosh has a reputation for user-friendliness based in large part on the fact that its OS effectively forces a common user interface on all applications, rather than letting the application designer get "creative." This also accounts for why far fewer applications get written for it than for Windows machines; "creative" interface design makes it easy to visually differentiate your screen shots from those of your competitors' programs. What's good for marketers isn't necessarily what's good for users (I suspect that with a lot of Web sites, the real problem is that the designers are using originality of navigation scheme as a substitute for originality of content). Eric Bohlman ----- When it comes down to the navigation of a site a browser provides ways of going forwards and backwards through the links you have clicked. It does not inform you where you are in a site or where other sections of a site lead to. For this every web author _has_ to design some kind of interface, be it a minmal or sophisticated. You are right there appears to ba a lack of standards in interface design, most of this is down to lack of teaching of interface design at even university level. Most computer scientists couldnt design a computer interface if their life depended upon it - the worst thing is some beleive it's common sense. When you attempt to use programs like Word and even free agent you see how bad it can get. As regards to the Mac interface I read alot about it during my university years and there are lots of leassons to be learnt by the likes of Microsoft - but it's worth noting many do avoid the standard mac interface. I now personally think the Mac interface is not as easy to use as it now could be - it's time for a new generation of interfaces as this one is over ten years old (some may even say 50!) Stewart Dean ----- Stew Dean wrote: > When it comes down to the navigation of a site a browser provides ways > of going forwards and backwards through the links you have clicked. > It does not inform you where you are in a site or where other sections > of a site lead to. Quite right, and that's the point. Traditionally on the WWW, the terms "Back" and "Forward" have been references to the browser's history stack. If you want to describe navigation in the web designer's conceptual space, then terms like "Previous", "Next", "Up", "Contents" etc. are recommended in the specifications. See for example http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/types.html#type-links I find those terms clear and relatively accurate, and even if I didn't, it would behove me to use the published terms (to conform with the rest of the WWW) rather than attempting to impose my own. As others on this thread have confirmed, but it bears repeating: users get no benefit out of every author trying to devise a new/better/incompatible user interface to the WWW. Alan J. Flavell %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%% INTUITIVE EQUALS FAMILIAR http://www.asktog.com/papers/raskinintuit.html %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%% Except the universe quite efficiently produces better "idiots". But that's the developers' problem. The human problem is that "Idiot Proof" systems often require that the users *remain* "idiots" forever in order to use them effectively. Arjun Ray %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%% (Steve Kucera) wrote: > I was trading thoughts with another web developer and showed him a site that > I had built with Netobjects. His first reaction was to look at the html and > comment (negatively) about Netobjects use of transparent gifs and tables to > lay out pages. " Look how messed up this html is" was his reaction. Which is why the "Objects" in "NetObjects" should be pronounced as if it were a verb, not a noun. greg@apple2.com %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%% From: Mike Swift <mike.swift@yeton.demon.co.uk> Subject: [uk.local.yorkshire] Clique Theory Date: 30 Jun 1999 00:00:00 GMT Message-ID: <ahbou=7la7ss$8fk_007@leeds.ac.uk> X-NNTP-Posting-Host: haruspex.demon.co.uk:158.152.162.249 Approved: ahbou-mod@duke.edu X-Disclaimer: The "Approved" header verifies header information for article transmission and does not imply approval of content. See .sig below. X-Posting-Moderator: Leonard Blanks X-For-FAQ-Mailto: ahboufaq@eey.org X-FAQ-Is-At: ftp://rtfm.mit.edu/pub/faqs/best-of-usenet-humor Followup-To: alt.humor.best-of-usenet.d X-Complaints-To: abuse@demon.net X-Trace: news.demon.co.uk 930703723 nnrp-11:23569 NO-IDENT haruspex.demon.co.uk:158.152.162.249 X-Submissions-To: ahbou-sub@duke.edu Organization: best of usenet humor Newsgroups: alt.humor.best-of-usenet Subject: Clique Theory From: drew.see.sig@leeds.ac.uk (Dr Drew) Newsgroups: uk.local.yorkshire THE DR. BREW LECTURE Good morning, students. Today I am going to outline an exciting new aspect of theoretical physics. It concerns the behaviour of particles when interacting with Neusgroupinos: also called TANTRUM MECHANICS. This is CLIQUE theory. The particle in question is officially called the T+ particle, but is known colloquially as the Troll. Trolls often come in bonded pairs, the troll and the antitroll. These pairs behave oddly: sometimes reinforcing one another, sometimes cancelling each other out. Occasionally a troll loses its antitroll partner and can then behave quite unpredictably, according to the rules of chaos: firing off random quarks (known as "posts") in an attempt to bond with a new antitroll. The existence of trolls was first proved by Hans Akrosstheocean in his famous "double-prat experiment", or the "experiment with two morons". Trolls, whether bonded to antitrolls or not, also interact with neusgroupinos. Neusgroupinos are stable hadrons with a tendency to resist interaction with trolls. As far as the troll is concerned, this resistance comes about through the neusgroupino's outer shell, or CLIQUE (I will explain the etymology of this term later). CLIQUEs are generally impervious to trolls, unless the troll has a particular "spin" that conforms to the already-existing structure of the neusgroupino. Most trolls possess either "top" or "bottom" spin as well as other "strange" or "charmed" characteristics. For instance, a given neusgroupino may interact with "charmed, bottom" trolls, but not "strange, top" ones. If a CLIQUE resists interaction with the troll, this can again cause unpredictable activity. The troll may fire off quark/posts in an attempt to break down the integrity of the neusgropino. These bursts of activity do not last long. Eventually, the troll decays, although many are more persistent than others. However, I have not yet touched upon the most interesting part of this theory at all, the element that reveals the central mystery of Tantrum Mechanics. It is this: _the CLIQUE only exists from the "perspective" of the troll_. From within the neusgroupino, particles are free to come and go. Indeed, the "outer shell", the perceived CLIQUE, is not a unified, integral and impervious entity at all. Many particles are quite free to interact with the neusgroupino, regardless of spin, as long as they do not take on the specific characteristics of the troll. It is impossible to state with certainty whether or not a given particle internal to the neusgroupino is in this outer shell at any given time or not. This is known as _Wilkinson's Uncertainty Principle_. Hence the derivation of the term CLIQUE: an acronym for CLearly Imaginary QUantum Entity. Thank you. Any questions? /Yes, what's the capital of Chad?/ Ndjamena. Next? /Couldn't you find a more intelligent group to which to post this?/ No, this is the best one I know. /Don't you think this post displays a quite sickening mixture of immaturity and erudition, not to mention breathtaking self-indulgence?/ Well, that's entirely subjective, isn't it? Make your own minds up, after all, it's a free country. -- Moderators accept or reject articles based solely on the criteria posted in the Frequently Asked Questions. Article content is the responsibility of the submitter. Submit articles to ahbou-sub@duke.edu. To write to the moderators, send mail to ahbou-mod@duke.edu. %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%% Fredie wrote: >I'm looking for some evidence with regards to how the styling of an >interface might effect a user and was hoping someone here could point me >in the right direction. I have some input for you. It verges on the hotter side of postings, but it's not really meant to be a flame, more like venting some frustration with things. Here goes: We sell an application that is easily one of, perhaps _the_, most powerful special effects system for windows. It sells quite well, really, all things considered. No complaints there. The interface mechanisms havn't been changed in years in any significant way - eight years, in fact. It uses menus, the recommended window "gadgets" for controlling position, size, maximization and so on. It does some unusual things with the right mouse button, mainly because (a) at the time we designed it, there wasn't really anything being done with the right mouse, and, (b) what is being done with the right mouse now (e.g. properties, mainly) isn't nearly as functional as what we've been doing with it within the context of editing an image, and, (c) there's no reasonable way to replace the functionality we added using it, ...and so we conclude that making such a change would annoy our general customer base. I personally think that's correct, because I know that when I try and do "stuff" in Photoshop and suchlike I am mortally annoyed by the lack of our right-mouse features, not to mention the lack of many of our area selection tools... he mentioned... but I digress. :-) I will admit up front that our general customer base, meaning those who know about us and understand what it is we are offering and have a use for same, is a LOT smarter by and large than the user population in general. Anyway, our application doesn't look "new". And, of course, its not. On the other hand, it's got eight years of development packed into it, just using the "old standards", is all. We do hear occassionally from customers about the non-artsy nature of the interface, but not much. Mostly we hear about functionality, good, bad, or indifferent. I think that's the upgrade functionality priority that another poster (from jasc?) alluded to. We've had the program refused for review based on the USE of a standard UI, though, which was pretty amazing, considering in the same letter the same guy said it was easier to use, faster and more powerful than anything he'd ever seen... go figure. I saved the letter, hung it on the wall. Right next to the sign that says "Democracy: Where any two idiots outvote a genius." Now, from my standpoint as a (lousy) artist who just loves to draw and etc: Things like Kai's applications drive me out of my mind. Trying to figure out what some organic sillyness does doesn't trip my trigger one bit. Apple's media player is another one - everything you've learned about moving windows, etc, is now in the sh*tter, because all the usual clues are gone - and what that *really* means to the enduser - me! - is that instead of working with the application is that I now have to go back, learn new ways to do everything in the windowing UI I *already* knew how to do, which is (a) NOT what I wanted to do when I started screwing with the app, and (b) completely useless in terms of being transferrable to another application. Applications like that are almost *always* slower, too - more trash to do is the root of the problem. Of course, InSmell would have us buy a faster computer at that point, so I guess I have nothing to bitch about... They're rarely scalable (and rationalize THAT to a guy with impaired vision... I'm mid forties and my eyes are giving me the first hints of trouble. I can only imagine how annoyed someone would be to find out they can't enlarge the lables (if indeed there ARE any lables!), and the UI elements so painstakingly learned over the years are now inapplicable...) and some things, while "cute", are really just mongo stupid - like the volume "knob" on the Apple media player, for one thing. Finally - and I know this is a personal preference issue, one that I appear to be in the minority about; I just detest the trend towards round everything. Rounded cars I can see. A Porsche will never ever in a million years look as good as a Lamborghini Countach, but those rounded edges make the car slippery, and that's actually a functional issue, so I close my eyes and pretend Porsches look good. Ditto recent American cars. But an '89 Z28 still looks a LOT better than a '99. :-) Speaking of rounded things that look really bad, I vote for the IMac as the absolute worst-looking piece of computer gear to ever hit the marketplace. To it's looks, you can add the loss of functionality that separate (hence easily replacable) standard parts like monitors would have given them. And people buy them in droves. I'll get to that in a bit. I'm busy ranting here... :-) I only remember one other machine that was quite as stupid as the IMac, one that even the general population wasn't dimwitted enough to bite on, and that was the NeXt as initially promoted in greyscale only. The telling thing? The NeXt icon on the center of that imposing greyscale monitor was in color. Why? Because even the wunderkind of lucky fools who ran that company knew one thing: color and flash sells stuff. To this day I don't understand how he could have been dimwitted enough to make that machine greyscale only. Oh well, he and his company paid for it, big time. However - and this is a BIG however - there is no good reason on this somewhat 00FF00 earth that a user interface should have either rounded buttons or huge plains of blank (or patterened but functionless) space. My screen space is MY screen space, and if I grudgingly give some over to a program, by Darwin it'd better give over functionality in return or it isn't going to be very well received at all! Looking at the Painter 5 demo, here we see some decent design for graphics UI. It's traditional - you'd never have trouble using it, really - yet they pushed the edges and it all makes visual sense... and it ALWAYS makes good use of space. And when it comes to "rounded" things, look at their color selector, or the gradient angle selector - there are actual "round" controls that work, make sense, are easy to use, are obvious to learn and zippy easy to remember because they are so well designed - compare that to those Apple clowns using a round control for a linear effect (volume). It might be cute, but it makes no sense at all, other than making a computer look like some cheapass handlheld gadget... We use "roundness" in our color selector too, and I think it's obvious and it is *definitely* perfectly functional and has a good reason to be that way. No "knobs", though. Look now at Photoshop - they didn't even *bother* to use the windows UI when they ported it, and not only do the window, button, dropdown and etc. controls do unexpected things, they don't even do them well. And Photoshop, by dint of serious marketing, has cornered the market in a number of areas they really have mainly been third rate players in. And the users are the ones who actually did it - no blame to Adobe, they just saw the writing on the wall and went for it. So we can surely conclude that end users DO buy flash. And why? Because they don't know what they're doing in the vast majority of cases. They buy religion, they buy astrology, they take amazing political crap into the southern intestinal region well greased with the vaseline from the media. They watched OJ for months and months and months and months and.... argh! They allow drinking and they have a fit when someone takes a hit off of a joint. By and large, they'd be real happy with a program that flashed, beeped and did the Furby dance. And they'll pay double for the privilege. Some of them might not even wonder what *else* it did. Compared to those people, the number of users who can make a very good decision based on real functionality are a tiny minority; thank Darwin that the present computer user base is so huge that there are enough of them out there to support those of us who are actually trying to make things as functional as possible, even if we're not perfect at it. And as for the rest... they're gonna LOVE that Apple media player - and they already made Kai's famous. :-) Welcome to the real world, where MTV, Beavis, Butthead, Bart and Cartman rule, and scientists and symphonies go begging for lunch money. Go ahead, put that rounded dung in your UI. You'll sell a million of 'em, the prettier, the better. But your tech support people will hate you. :-) --Ben Blish %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%% On Fri, 2 Jul 1999, Bertil Wennergren wrote: > The HEAD-tags are optional. But the element TITLE (which must > be inside HEAD) is not optional. I Spotted on the WWW earlier today: <TITLE>No Title

The first one is a stupid construct only, the second one is an attributed piece of markup. Both of them are directly intended to be presentational only. Since the latter is defined in a DTD along with a specification of valid attribute values, I would guess that you could go along with that one then for the point I would like to make. Both Sue and I have on occasions tried to start a discussion on how to generate a list of standard CLASS values to be included in a possible future HTML DTD. So far the interest has been minimal. It would possibly become a long list, but in my view it would be a better approach then to start inventing tags to fill the same purpose. Just because by using the tag approach, we would end up in a situation where tags would have to be designed to be browser commands again, and in my view they should not be that. We are walking a thin line here, I know that, but my approach to markup has evolved into thinking about a marked up doc as "one long string of data" that does not contain any info what so ever about how to render the stuff at the client side. All possible suggestions about rendering should, in my view, be encapsulated in a "side doc" that the client can make use of if s/he wants to do that. >++ >> The problem with SPAN, CLASS and style-sheets >++ >> compared to a DTD with more structure is, that if you don't make a >++ >> style-sheet for every different current device and future device, >++ >> you lose. No, my doc would just fall back to the standard compliant HTML that it contains to start with. Feel free to do whatever you want with that. If it happens to be one of my docs, you can even rely on the fact that I try my best to be a responsible autor in the first place. >++ You seem to hint at the possibility that there should be something in >++ the markup that would aid a later presentation? > >Most certainly! Isn't that the entire idea of having different elements? Nope. You can have no idea what so ever of the type of client side software that will be used to read your doc. >Otherwise, all we need is SPAN. Of course not, don't be silly. >Of course I want my browser to display a header different from a >paragraph, and I want emphasized text to be displayed different >from normal text as well. Your browser, aha! a special case. >Knowing the structure, and most importantly, knowing what a certain >elements *means* is vital to make the right presentation, taking >into account my specific restrictions, needs and wishes. You as an author _can_not_know_ in advance what an appropriate rendering situation would be for the client in the first place. >You, as a document stylesheet author have no idea about my >restrictions, needs and wishes. I would like to be able to use one of my software tools to extract, let's say a "special tools required" list from one of your docs, send it out on a printer, hand that list over to the maintenance manager so he can go to the stores and request those tools for the job he has been assigned to do. I could not care less about your "restrictions" on presentation in that case. If the rolling mill is down it costs thousands of dollars an hour, and we need to get it fixed, that's it. I can only hope that you did classify and identify your list entries so that I could get my job on the road? >Tell me, what does a SPAN mean? What do I, as a browser or personal style >sheet author do with SPAN? I'm not talking about the fact that given a >particular document and a limited set of devices I can think of, I have >to make a style sheet. No. I'm writing something general. Something that >should work for any document. SPAN doesn't have a meaning. EM does. EM has a meaning, agreed, but it's definitely not a presentational one. SPAN has the same meaning as DIV would have if there was no defined list of valid attribue values for e.g. ALIGN. >++ I thought we had left that stage as of HTML4 strict. >We left out *specific* presentation in HTML4 strict. But we didn't get rid >of the concept of "document author marks up structure; user agent does >presentation". And it became allowed for an author to include a "suggested" rendering. To be used or discarded at the users initiative. >++ And also it may be a good idea to contemplate a bit about the meaning of >++ the CLASS and ID attributes them self. >++ They are used now as "hooks" to CSS styling in HTML docs, but there's >++ absolutely noting in the specs that says that this is the only allowed >++ use of them. > >Well, yes, they said that 4 years ago when I first argued against the >use of stylesheets as well. But what has come of it? Where is the RFC >that describes what certain values for CLASS mean? Who's working on such >a draft? We may want to team up on that as it seems, I know Sue has an interest on this topic too. But where? IETF seems to have left the HTML side of things totally so an RFC process is probably out of the question. >++ >> People who need special presentation cannot anticipate your >++ >> markup. They can if there's a DTD. >++ No way, people who need a special presentation do definitely need a >++ stylesheet, you are contradicting your self. >++ No DTD in the world will tell them how to present any material. >You don't get my point. I do, and I have known about your standpoint for several years in fact, all the way back to when WDG-Tina started to give me a real workover on HTML. But maybe we are just standing close on each side of a border line? >SPAN + CLASS + document stylesheet == document author driven layout. >DTD + browser + author stylesheet == reader driven layout. >I've always thought the latter was the fundament of HTML. For the former >I might as well use PostScript. As you may have noticed from "recent developments" that cause is "lost" in a way. If there's a future for new additions to HTML we need to "put several feets on the ground" at the same time, no? But I still can not see a need for block-markup inside P :) but I will accept sensible suggestions on new inlines for said element. Jan Roland Eriksson %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%% Michael K. Neylon wrote: >catnip wrote: >>greg@apple2.com wrote: >>>Mike Shore wrote: >>>> >>>> When you click on a link to load a new page, the URL window usually >>>> displays the new page filename. Is there a way to not update the URL >>>> window? >>> >>>Why? Are you ashamed of your URL? >> >>Be gentle, Greg. URL anxiety is a touchy subject for some. > >Just remember, it's not the size of the URL, it's how you use it that >matters :-) Ha! You actually believe that line? ;-) catnip ------- >Ha! You actually believe that line? ;-) In keeping with the less serious nature of this discussion :-) Q: Are URLs like sports cars or the opposite? I.e. do those with bigs URLs have little *deleted*s (and v.v.)? Or is the reverse true? Given the prevelance of ??.nu I would have expected the latter - although I know a few people who insisted on names such as www.really-really-big-stuff-limited.co.uk :-) Jacqui Caren ------ > >Q: Are URLs like sports cars or the opposite? > >I.e. do those with bigs URLs have little *deleted*s (and v.v.)? >Or is the reverse true? >Given the prevelance of ??.nu I would have expected the latter >- although I know a few people who insisted on names such as > www.really-really-big-stuff-limited.co.uk :-) I'm currently conducting extensive research on this subject. I'll get back to you (if I have enough energy left). ;-) catnip %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%% "Edwin Purvee" writes: >Right now www.htmlhelp.org is down. No one can retrieve the FAQ unless >there is a mirror somewhere else that has it. Fortunately, there are two mirrors: Dutch Mirror Danish Mirror Peter C. Jones %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%% "Melissa" wrote: > I need to know if there is away to stop people from stealing > images off of my website? I want to post photos I own and I dont > want people taking them! Please help me!!! You have the right to not put up a website. If you give up that right, any files you put up can and will be copied by someone. You have the right to hire an attorney, and have your attorney prosecute any offenders on your behalf. If you cannot afford one, you really shouldn't give up the aforementioned right. greg@apple2.com %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%% In article <19990723083721.22478.00000702@ng-cg1.aol.com>, sanchm@aol.com (Sanchm) wrote: > >Hi there! I am new in this job and I am wondering if anyone is > >familiar/expert on usability, specifically web usability, that you > >could share to me your knowledge about it. Or if you know of any site > >or other references that I could use as a guide at work. > > Jakon Nielsen's www.useit.com is a great place to start. I just enter the usability field myself, in addition to Jakob Nielsen's site take a look at: http://is.twi.tudelft.nl/hci/ http://www.awl.com/cseng/titles/0-201-69497-2/website/index.html http://www.upassoc.org/ http://usableweb.com/ http://www.asktog.com/index.html Hope this helps.....good luck! John Stegner ----- Hi, also look at: http://www.idc.com/ http://www.psychology.nottingham.ac.uk:8080/~lizc/UID.RL.html http://www.megataq.mcg.gla.ac.uk/hcirefs.html http://athos.rutgers.edu/~shklar/www4/rmiller/rhmpapr.html#learning http://www.usability.uk.com (good case study on e-commerce and usability) Gary ----- Try this site: http://www.best.com/~jthom/usability/ Shawn Zhang ----- See if you can find colleagues in your area: http://www.acm.org/sigchi/local-sigs/ SIGCHI = Special Interest Group on Computer Human Interaction Peter Boersma ----- Hi there You might find the following link useful: http://www.uie.com It's the web site of a company called User Interface Engineering. They've published some interesting articles on web usability. When you get to the home page, click on the Articles & Resources link down the left-hand side of the page. Also, try http://www.webreview.com There's a drop-down list box marked 'Topics' on their front page. Select Usability to see a list of related articles. Best regards - Adil %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%% Markus Daus writes: > there are a lot of different findings concerning a good > hypertext-navigation. I would like to know which kind of navigation you > prefer within a large website. Are you asking how I prefer a web site to be structured? I prefer a heirachical structure where the leaves contain the "real" information and nodes guides you to the right branches. A useful addition to this is shortcuts to the nodes between the root node and the page itself (like on www.delorie.com). It is my experience that very few users are able to recognise any structure in a web site? Does anybody have some suggestions for solving this problem. Jacob Sparre Andersen ----- Hi Marcus and Jacob Jakob Nielsen's web site: http://www.useit.com is a good place to look for articles on web usability, hypertext, web navigation and structure. Here a few specific articles you might find helpful: Guidelines for Link Titles: http://www.useit.com/alertbox/980111.html A Browser with Structural Navigation http://www.useit.com/papers/icab.html The Future of Hypertext: http://www.useit.com/alertbox/hypertextmodels.html Short explanation of the navigation bar on his site: http://www.useit.com/about/nographics.html Best regards - Adil ----- > It is my experience that very few users are able to > recognise any structure in a web site? Does anybody have > some suggestions for solving this problem. Find the book: "HyperCard Stack Design Guidelines" by Apple Computer, Inc. ISBN 0-201-51784-1 Published by Addison-Wesley Publishing Company, Inc. That book is surprisingly relevant to good web design that imposes a sense of structure, among other things. Trade secret =P --adam baker ----- Rather than insisting they recognise it, just design the navigation so well that they don't need to understand the structure at all, because they can easily find what they want anyway. An interesting article was published in User Interface Engineering's newletter, 'Eye for Design' (Mar/Apr 99) called "Users want data, not structure". See http://world.std.com/~uieweb/free.htm The structure which is right for your data, and the one which is needed by your users, will be quite different from each other. Focus on what they need to do, not just on what you need to store. Chris Rigden %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%% On Tue, 27 Jul 1999 20:04:38 -0700, Shmuel Arwas wrote: >Could anyone recommend a practical book on Visual Displays ? >Up till now I have failed to find an appropriate book dealing with >hardware >aspects as well as GUI designs. > Ben Scneiderman discusses a lot of h/w issues like touchscreens. Have a look at: www.cs.umd.edu/hcil/pubs/books/sparks-of-innovation.shtm See the User Interfaces for Embedded Systems Page at http://www.panelsoft.com Niall Murphy %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%% hugg@my-deja.com wrote: > What is the current state of research into generating user interfaces > from a higher-level description? By higher-level description, I mean > one above the realm of buttons, windows, edit boxes, and other widgets > -- instead one that is concerned with tasks, data structures, modes, > user flow paths, etc. One use of such a description language would be > to generate actual UIs of different paradigms (graphical, command-line, > web-based, etc). > > Knowing little about the field -- can someone tell me how far along > meta-UI's (for lack of a better term) have come, and where to find > examples of their use? > You could take a look at http://www.uidesign.net . It maybe not exactly what you are looking for but its a start. David Anderson %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%% >... >> Just the opposite, they view the cgi version, and the large image loads, >> then they view the static version later, and the large image is cached, so >> load time is relatively fast. The next time (and i'm afraid I forgot to >> mention this earlier) they are redirected to the static page after >> submitting a form (so it's the 2nd time they see the static page) and the >> cached image is not used, the entire page reloads, even tho the document >> location is the same one they've already seen. IE has always had problems with its cache. The funniest one is in 3.0 browsers with sites that use relative referencing. For example, our site had logo.gif. So do a lot of porn sites apparently. A customer complanied about a nekkid lady appearing on our page. Turned out, someone in the family was doing some late night surfing, if you know what I mean. REBUS %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%% Subject: NEWSFLASH: Supremes rule anti-advert-ware illegal Date: 28 Jul 1999 14:28:01 -0700 From: Tom Christiansen Newsgroups: comp.lang.perl.misc, comp.infosystems.www.authoring.html March 32, 2002 Washington DC - After more than two years in and out of the courts, The Supreme Court today upheld the lower courts' ruling that the viewing of a website in any layout and format other than the one set-up by that site's authors was illegal. The original suit was brought by a cartel of powerful web businesses all over the country, initially sponsored by the Direct Marketers Association (DMA). Defendants included Junkbusters Inc, a mysterious Perl programmer named ``Abigail'', and thirty-four other businesses and individuals who had created software to let users by-pass blinking pictures, pop-ups advertisements, and intended controls on font, color, size, and backgrounds. This means that the lower courts' previous award of seventeen billion dollars is due immediately. Upon hearing the ruling, Junkbusters quickly filed for bankruptcy, but it is widely believed that their the software authors and corporate directors and their children's children's children will all be personally liable. Furthermore, the text-based web browser, Lynx, is now illegal to use except on your own sites, as are any proxies that filter or rewrite incoming webpages in any way, including the suppression of blinking text. Both Microsoft and AOL Microsystems must immediately issue mandatory patches to their browsers to disable the users from being able to disable automatic loading of images or moving GIFs. Users not applying the patch will be subject to criminal persecution and forfeiture of their first-born child. A joint statement issued by the not-for-profit American Association for the Blind and the International Epileptics Support Center decried the decision as essentially barring their members from the web. The DMA praised the decision, stating that ``the needs of Commercial Enterprise would no longer be stymied by Communists and other PBS and NPR sympathizers.'' President Gore also weighed in with his pleasure at the decision, levelly intoning in his best computer-speech-simulator simulation, ``This just blasted away the roadblocks in my Information Superhighway. Next term, we're going to the stars!'' This appeared to be an oblique reference to his constituents' efforts to gather re-election funds through click-through advertising fees. The president was in closed conference this afternoon with top members of Congress and his InfoBahn Czar, apparently discussing how soon they could implement a new, mandatory A-chip to be placed in televisions and VCRs so TV and video advertisements could no longer be avoided by consumers through editing, muting, fast-forwarding, or channel-surfing. A vexing and mysterious hacker squad known only as the Spamvert Amnesty League (SAL) briefly seized control of the White House website, where they replaced the campaign advertisements with malicious links to charity and humanitarian sites around the world, as well as with threats of revenge against spamvert supporters everywhere. At the same time, a digitized parody video of _A_Clockwork_Orange_ appeared on the Fox channel's satellite download, complete with credits to SAL. The bogus remake of Kubrick's disturbing masterpiece this time depicted American consumers held prisoner as commercial advertising was blasted into their propped-open eyes and ears. Credits on the video listed the SAL. Their choice of the European anthem, Beethoven's Ninth Symphony, has led authorities to look in Europe for their homebase, as it is widely understood that Europe provides refuge to uncounted intellectuals, artists, anti-commercial socialist sympathizers, and other commie rats, all hiding from the righteous wrath of invasive American technoplutocracy. Twenty-eight prominent American cyberbusiness leaders who spoke on condition of anonymity all felt that pursuing nuclear options against SAL would not be unjustified in defense of American national interests, and that collateral damages in Europe would be a small price to pay, especially now that their advertising revenues were guaranteed. +--------------------------------------------------------------+ | ``Contempt, rather than celebration, is the proper response | | to advertising and the system that makes it possible.'' | | --Neil Postman | | !!!This quote hacked into this press release by SAL!!! | +--------------------------------------------------------------+ -- "No, I'm not going to explain it. If you can't figure it out, you didn't want to know anyway..." --Larry Wall ------ + Users not applying the patch will be subject to criminal persecution + and forfeiture of their first-born child. And this is bad...how? ;) James ------ [snip: spooky newsflash] I heard a rumor (no names) that a major production company is making this story into a movie --- initial leaks of the screenplay treatment indicate a starring role for Michael Douglas as a power hungry Cybercapitalist with the *unusual* twist that he is being stalked by an elusive (possibly female) adversary on the internet. I can't wait. Andrew Johnson ------- Hmmm. It's awfully hot out for April 1st. Matthew O. Persico ------ >Credits on the video listed the SAL. >Their choice of the European anthem, Beethoven's Ninth Symphony, has >led authorities to look in Europe for their homebase, as it is widely >understood that Europe provides refuge to uncounted intellectuals, >artists, anti-commercial socialist sympathizers, and other commie rats, >all hiding from the righteous wrath of invasive American >technoplutocracy. It must be Switzerland. That sort of organization requires the right to bear arms to be safe. >Twenty-eight prominent American cyberbusiness leaders who spoke on >condition of anonymity all felt that pursuing nuclear options against >SAL would not be unjustified in defense of American national interests, >and that collateral damages in Europe would be a small price to pay, >especially now that their advertising revenues were guaranteed. Clearly, we must acquire SDI weaponry. Anybody for phasers? Joseph Hertzlinger ------- > March 32, 2002 > >Washington DC - After more than two years in and out of the courts, >The Supreme Court today upheld the lower courts' ruling that the viewing >of a website in any layout and format other than the one set-up by that >site's authors was illegal. > >The original suit was brought by a cartel of powerful web businesses >all over the country, initially sponsored by the Direct Marketers >Association (DMA). Defendants included Junkbusters Inc, a mysterious >Perl programmer named ``Abigail'', and thirty-four other businesses >and individuals who had created software to let users by-pass blinking >pictures, pop-ups advertisements, and intended controls on font, color, >size, and backgrounds. Honey, I think you have *way* too much time on your hands! Get thee to a Perl-a-Thon. catnip ------- Frank Quednau wrote: > You always seemed so busy on the Perl Newsgroup! What happened? No > newbies that require enlightenment ? :) > > Seriously, I enjoyed reading this a lot. It kind of summarises the > problems I have as a European with that amazing Sub-continent that is > the USA. You spelled 'Incontinent' wrong. (At least you don't have to share a border. It's been described as being in bed with an elephant.) Dan McGarry -------- > The Supreme Court today upheld the lower courts' ruling that the viewing > of a website in any layout and format other than the one set-up by that > site's authors was illegal. > Oh well thats alright then - the proxy I'm working on () only takes those useless MS fphover applets out .... ;-} Jonathan Stowe --------- > March 32, 2002 > >Washington DC - After more than two years in and out of the courts, >The Supreme Court today upheld the lower courts' ruling that the viewing >of a website in any layout and format other than the one set-up by that >site's authors was illegal. Well, I guess this flash from the future also means that M$ as succeeded in taking over the entire Web--infrastructure and all--so that users of Netscape or any other browser that wasn't the version of IE the author used, wouldn't be accidentally performing a criminal act. (I also guess that this means the "Don't Show Images" option is also history, along with: scroll-bars, the color control on your monitor, and font settings. Oh, also you'll be required by law to have a 19-inch monitor set to 1024x780 at 16M+ colors.) REBUS ------- On 28 Jul 1999 14:28:01 -0700, Tom Christiansen wrote: Had me going, until I read the following... >Users not applying the patch will be subject to criminal persecution >and forfeiture of their first-born child. Whereupon, I re-checked the dateline at the top... > March 32, 2002 Y'know, that would've been one of the best April Fools for you to have saved up for next year. Pity. Still, Nice one. Got me, just about! Roger Stenning %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%% This works perfectly. Unless, of course, the browser is too old for this bullshit, or it underlines links whatever you may say... The world of html is NOT a utopia, it's a bloody hell. Whatever you do will go wrong... On some computers, or some browsers! Christian Davén %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%% Subject: netscape images Date: Thu, 12 Aug 1999 20:41:44 -0400 From: Mike B Organization: Boston University Newsgroups: comp.infosystems.www.authoring.html I have a site I've created and I can't get the images to show up in netscape, IE handles them fine and I've done other work where this isn't an issue. some of the gif images are animated, but I don't see how that is a problem. some one help me film495@hotmail.com ------ Mike B explains it all: :I have a site I've created and I can't get the images to show up in :netscape, IE handles them fine and I've done other work where this isn't :an issue. some of the gif images are animated, but I don't see how that :is a problem. Fix line 47! ------- Line 47 definitely needs fixing. But I think line 81 should be combined with lines 32 and 34 to create a multi-patterned imaging array that will render just fine in any browser. But certainly fix line 47, before you forget! Chance %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%% Donald C. Carter wrote: > Just wondering on what the deal is with not using depreciated tags??? Depreciated means: 1) It used to be the way you were supposed to do it 2) It's still supported, but only for backwards compatability 3) It may not (probably wont?) be supported in future versions 4) Therefore, it's suggested you don't use it in any new work Roy Smith ------ The deal is in the definition. 1. It's "deprecated", not "depreciated". There is a difference, otherwise why have two words? 2. It means "although we support this now, we really truly intend to drop support in the future, because we think some other brand new widget does it better". If you believe this, you should avoid the deprecated stuff after most (a business decision) browser support the new widget. Kurt J. Lanza %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%% R.C. wrote in message <37B22B1C.C05698D1@usa.net>... >Without resorting to Link Exchange programs, what other "legal" methods >are there for >generating webpage hits. Depending on your content getting listed on site listers, best of the web listers, some webrings, doing link exchanges with other sites with similar content. This is differnet than a link exchange program because this is targetted to your audience. Also make good use of meta tags and writing the copy on the front page to include as many of your keywords as is reasonable. Try these links for more info: http://www.digitaldivas.com/zine/7-99art/articles_faith.htm http://www.digitaldivas.com/zine/resources.html The first link is an article about how to build web traffic. The second article is a listing of resource for building your web traffic. Kandee ----- Legal is the thing. You see, e-mail is not illegal as long as you aren't soliciting something illegal. The term SPAM is much abused. For example; if I sign a guest book on a page about hunting I am publicly declaring my interest in hunting. Therefore, I EXPECT and often WELCOME e-mail from people about hunting (I don't hunt - this is just an example so don't send me hunting info!) A well written e-mail sent to a specific audience group of people who signed guest books is totally acceptable. Though some have labelled it spam I use the tactic VERY successfully and with never even one complaint out of literally thousands and thousands of e-mails. The note I send is short and to the point. It describes very well the Website I am inviting to and tells the people that I harvest e-mails by hand from guest books and Webpages. I don't use software and I send each message individually. Personally I think this is very acceptable and campaign continually on behalf of marketers who use this method which is more relative to the salesperson who rents a kiosk at the mall than the ever persistent telephone solicitor. Targeted audience, measurable success (I'm truly at well over 50% - no kidding), and a LOT of work. But it beats anything I've ever had hands down. Just make sure that if your Website is about fishing bait that you don't get e-mail addresses from a tennis Website, you know what I'm sayin' here? AWE2000 %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%% I checked the faq, but wasn't quite sure where exactly this belonged. If anyone feels the need to adjust followups, please do so. Thanks. My question is in the use of tables or style sheets. I want a page to have data shown like this: --------------------------------------- | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | |------------------------ | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | --------------------------------------- It seems like I shoudl be able to render this using nested tables; however, in reading the W3 doc on html, it says that one should use Style Sheets for formatting and such. I couldn't find anything about style sheets saying how to do the above, so I'm wondering what's the best way--if someone does have a url of a doc on it, I would be appreciative. Props --------- The details on this should be mostly correct, if not completely -- I haven't tested this actual instance: +---+----+ | | b | | a +--+-+ | | c|d| +---+--+-+

Now that I've put all that out there, I'm sure there's something wrong with it. But the general idea should be correct. This is going to take a CSS implementation with a very strong box model -- IE 5 may be able to cut it -- Mozilla would probably be better. Looking at what I just put out there -- furthermore, it's not implemented very semantically. Using the positioning properties of CSS-2 (I believe) would allow you to cut out the nested DIVs. Just don't do anything silly and express positions in pixels or other output-device specific format. Andrew McCormick ------- Props wrote: > ... > My question is in the use of tables or style sheets. ... > however, in reading the W3 doc on html, it says that one should use > Style Sheets for formatting and such. We have an example here: Sue Sims %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%% Just a thought... Biggerism...aka lets-add-it-because-its-cool syndrome. Dont forget that content is what people go to a site for. There comes a point where all the neato little tricks and CSS and doohickeys are just that. There comes a point where all the cool things no longer add to a site's interface and usability, but detract from it. From a technical point of view, much of these cool techniques are so spottily supported that its almost pointless to use them. Many of the little work-arounds and hacks we have come up with for specific situations may not work in the next browser iteration from microsoft or netscape. neither company follows the specification perfectly. Each has little bugs and querks, with netscape supporting barely half of the spec at all. Yes, the time has come for more intiutive, easy to use interfaces both online and in the OS. yes, we now have the language ability to do so. But let us remember that the most intiutive interface is still the simple hyperlink. Let us remember that not everyone makes sure they have the latest and greatest browser, and even if they do its still spotty. -Dave Solimini ------ I, for one, agree. My opinion as to reasons for this is sure to upset many...although its not my intention. That reason is inexperience. Even if you where at the doorstep of the commercial WWW boom, that still means you have, at best, 10 years of experience, while the rest of the graphical/written communications world is working on 200 or 300. REBUS ------ Dave Solimini wrote: > Biggerism...aka lets-add-it-because-its-cool syndrome. Dont forget that >content is what people go to a site for. There comes a point where all the >neato little tricks and CSS and doohickeys are just that. There comes a >point where all the cool things no longer add to a site's interface and >usability, but detract from it. Dave, U seem to be contradicting yourself here, either that or you haven't built anything using CSS. Either way, CSS is no "neato trick". When well employed it makes mark-up a lot simpler, cleaner and less cluttered and gives a web designer or owner/manager far greater control over site wide look/feel than pre CSS use of tags and 's for style and layout. True, current support is a bit scratchy but loads of people are moving on up to the ver4+ browsers now. Shortly there will be a large enough body of browsers out there to be able to commit to CSS use. >hyperlink. Let us remember that not everyone makes sure they have the latest >and greatest browser, and even if they do its still spotty. This is true, but when U have a suitably grunty PC, and the disk space to accommodate a recent browser, why be a stick in the mud and stay with an old version. I just don't understand that attitude. DeeKnow ------- DeeKnow explains it all: :This is true, but when U have a suitably grunty PC, and the disk space :to accommodate a recent browser, why be a stick in the mud and stay :with an old version. I just don't understand that attitude. Why upgrade, when one's current wowser handles HTML perfectly well? I just don't understand that attitude. revjack ------- DeeKnow wrote: > This is true, but when U have a suitably grunty PC, and the disk space > to accommodate a recent browser, why be a stick in the mud and stay > with an old version. I just don't understand that attitude. Do you need to understand it before you can accomodate these browsers? I don't see how understanding is relavent here. The only relavent questions are: How many are there? and Do you wish to support them? Oisin "Curly++" Curtin -------- Dave Solimini (dsol@prodigy.net) wrote: : Just a thought... : Biggerism...aka lets-add-it-because-its-cool syndrome. Dont forget that : content is what people go to a site for. There comes a point where all the : neato little tricks and CSS and doohickeys are just that. There comes a : point where all the cool things no longer add to a site's interface and : usability, but detract from it. This is actually very similar to what happened in the early days of desktop publishing, and IMHO the cause is the same: people with no background in graphic design suddenly became able to create graphic designs, but they had never acquired a sense for what does and doesn't work. Novice graphic designers worry that their creations aren't busy enough; experienced graphic designers worry that their creations are too busy. The experienced graphic designer will use the absolute minimum number of visual elements that he needs to get his point across. Why? Because he knows through experience that if he uses anything more, the visual elements will start competing with each other for the viewer's attention and will draw it away from his message. An aural analogy for an overly busy document would be a bunch of people shouting different messages at the listener. The novice designer thinks that if he doesn't pack his page full of as many kinds of visual elements as he can, people will think he didn't really put much effort into his creation. The experienced designer, on the other hand, knows that much of his real effort goes into simplifying his creation (just as the experienced writer knows that expressing a point in 200 words requires a lot more effort than expressing it in 1000). The novice designer tries to impress other novice desires with the number of tricks that he knows; the experienced designer, to the extent that he's trying to impress other designers at all, tries to impress them with his knowledge of *when* to use various techniques, but for the most part he's trying to impress his viewers with the message he's trying to deliver. The same considerations apply to Web sites. The presentation of a site isn't an end in itself; it's a means for delivering the site's message. It's true that a site whose message consists of information intended to satisfy the user's need for specific knowledge will generally need a different presentation from a site whose message is aimed at promoting something, but in both cases the presentation needs to support the content, not distract from it. A promotional site generally has more of a need to direct the user's attention than an informational site, but too many designers end up trying to direct the user's attention in several different directions at the same time; this does nothing but give the user a confusing and annoying experience. If you want to promote something to someone, confusing and annoying them is not the way to do it. Unlike the case for any other media used for promotion, the presentation of a Web site can only direct the viewer's attention *within* the site; it cannot direct his attention *to* the site from outside. By its very nature, a Web site is invisible unless it *already* has the viewer's attention; presentational techniques that work in other media to draw the viewer's attention to the medium itself usually fail on the Web because they wind up either losing the viewer's attention (e.g. by forcing him to wait for the page to appear) or splitting it. The presentation for a promotional Web site doesn't need to say "look at me!"; it needs to say "you're looking in the right place." A promotional Web site *shouldn't* look like a TV commercial; a TV commercial looks the way it does because it's trying to deliver its message to someone who's getting up to go pee; a Web site can assume that its viewer has an empty bladder. Eric Bohlman -------- J Kirby Inwood wrote: > Eric Bohlman wrote: > >> The presentation for a > >> promotional Web site doesn't need to say "look at me!"; it needs to say > >> "you're looking in the right place." A promotional Web site *shouldn't* > >> look like a TV commercial; a TV commercial looks the way it does because > >> it's trying to deliver its message to someone who's getting up to go pee; > >> a Web site can assume that its viewer has an empty bladder. > > Excellent and very, very true. The good thing is that the amateurs are > creating very lucrative repair work for the professionals. > Keep it up kiddies.!! This would be nice if it were true. The truth is, the people who commission expensive corporate Web sites by and large haven't thought about the nature of the Web as a medium. They probably don't use the Web themselves, and are embarrassed to admit this. They are used to television advertising: that's a medium they're used to commissioning, and, furthermore, one they're used to consuming. So the more a Web-site looks like a television advert, the more likely they are to buy it. And again, if you take these people aside and explain why their attention-grabbing, multimedia, looks-great-on-the-designer's-high-spec- machine-but-takes-ten-minutes-to-download-from-the-web page is poor design for the web, they will (correctly) point out that http://www.their-main-rivals.com/ is just the same. After a while, they will learn that their glitzy site isn't bringing them in any sales, and they will conclude 'the Web doesn't work'. Simon Brooke %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%% Like FAQs, there are FIBs (Frequently Indulged Bogosities) - myths that simply won't die: they seem "true" just often enough to sustain people's faith in them. All the more so when the words actually used happen to be so decei^Wconvincing. Arjun Ray %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%% Subject: Warning: is harmful Date: Thu, 02 Sep 1999 08:10:11 GMT From: Jukka.Korpela@hut.fi Newsgroups: comp.infosystems.www.authoring.html I have used an element like on some of my pages, with the intent that some users might be able to select, on printing the page, the PostScript version which I have produced. The HTML 4.0 specification mentions such usage in an example at http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/struct/links.html#h-12.3.3 I once received an E-mail message, saying that when trying to print such a document of mine "for users with non ps-printers like me with my little HP Laserjet 5L, this results in the well known PS-garbage". Later I received another message describing a similar problem, and I started worrying. It seems that IE 4 (the only browser which cares about such LINK elements as far as I can see) misbehaves seriously. On my IE 4, which _has_ been configured to print to a (spooled) PostScript printer, and does that as a rule, prints the content of document.ps as text showing the PostScript code! The PostScript files have been generated using html2ps and print normally when simply sent to a PostScript printer. I have no idea of how common this problem is, but I'm afraid it's pretty common, and there doesn't seem to be much point currently in using the LINK element to specify an alternate format. It's better to write a visible A HREF link to it, with a suitable explanation. %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%% Subject: HTML 4.01 Date: Thu, 26 Aug 1999 23:48:48 -0500 From: greg@apple2.com Newsgroups: comp.infosystems.www.authoring.html Well, a new update to HTML 4.0 has come out -- HTML 4.01 -- and you can find it at . It includes some changes in the DTD. Some of the high points: o Attribute values can now also contain colons and underscores without requiring quotation marks (still no slashes though) o Meaning of ROWSPAN=0 and COLSPAN=0 altered, making them span only to the end of their rowgroup and colgroup o Tags can have redundant NAME and ID attributes as long as they have identical values (and more NAME attributes throughout) which should make Javascript authors who want to validate their pages happy o Notes that browsers should assume closure of polygon imagemap AREAs (but authors should close them themselves -- What, were you born in an open curve? Close the polygon!) o MAP can now contain both AREA and %block; simultaneously o Attributes hspace, vspace, and border can now only have pixel measurements (no percentages there anymore) o Added ismap attribute to INPUT... but still no BORDER attribute o SELECT with nothing selected should not submit anything o MARGINWIDTH and MARGINHEIGHT attributes of the FRAME tag may have 0 as their value... except they seem to have forgotten to apply that change. (It still reads "The value must be greater than zero (pixels)." Whoops! o It says, "The NOFRAMES element can be used with all DTDs defined for HTML 4.01," yet it is still absent from the 4.01 strict.dtd. Another "Whoops!"? Since some of these involve changes to the DTD, the new DOCTYPEs are: ----------- Jukka Korpela wrote: >greg@apple2.com wrote: >> It includes some changes in the DTD. Some of the high points: > high? :-) Is it supposed to be "hi" as in a greeting? Maybe "significant" points. >> o Meaning of ROWSPAN=0 and COLSPAN=0 altered, making them span only to >> the end of their rowgroup and colgroup > That miserable hack had best been forgotten. Did any browser implement > it, perchance? Netscape 5.0 promises compliance. I've been working on another program which does. Now I have to modify it to behave differently if 4.01 is used. >> o MAP can now contain both AREA and %block; simultaneously > Does this really improve accessibility? It would allow you to put the equivalent text links version of the imagemap links inside the MAP declaration, while still using AREA tags for browsers that don't handle the COORDS attribute for the A tag. >> o Attributes hspace, vspace, and border can now only have pixel >> measurements (no percentages there anymore) > Improvement over what? Before, they allowed percentages. Don't know why one would use a percentage measurement for BORDER anyway. >> o Added ismap attribute to INPUT... but still no BORDER attribute > What is ISMAP for INPUT? INPUT TYPE=IMAGE has for long been a method > for image map like things. Improvement? Please, saying "high points" doesn't necessarily mean that the changes are improvements. You assume to much. I guess it provides completeness since it could be an ISMAP or a USEMAP, but that doesn't explain why it wasn't also added to OBJECT which can take USEMAP. If the type is image, ISMAP is still implied. They should have changed it so that it was no longer implied so that its presence would have meaning. INPUT though is a horribly overloaded tag and IMO should be split up into multiple tags of each type. I'm troubled that apparently ISMAP isn't a deprecated attribute. >> o SELECT with nothing selected should not submit anything > Yawn. An author should still set a default value, so what's the point? Motivates the browser authors to conserve a little bit of bandwidth. >> o MARGINWIDTH and MARGINHEIGHT attributes of the FRAME tag may have 0 >> as their value... except they seem to have forgotten to apply that >> change. (It still reads "The value must be greater than zero >> (pixels)." Whoops! > That happens. I hope they fix it. Not really that I care about frames, but rather about the accuracy of the DTD. Netscape can't be faulted for adhering to the specification by not allowing zero there, but apparently the specification has bent to Microsoft's will... or at least intended to bend. >> o It says, "The NOFRAMES element can be used with all DTDs defined for >> HTML 4.01," yet it is still absent from the 4.01 strict.dtd. Another >> "Whoops!"? > We still have just a few noframes capable browsers, so what does it > matter? :-) Even frames-capable browsers can render a normally-framed document outside a frameset, such as via a search engine result. NOFRAMES in this situation would show additional information which is otherwise hidden if the document was not framed. (Typically this should be used to provide navigation links normally available only in the other framed documents.) greg@apple2.com -------------- Jukka Korpela wrote: >greg@apple2.com wrote in message >> Netscape 5.0 promises compliance [with ROWSPAN=0 and COLSPAN=0]. >> I've been working on another program which does. > What I meant is that such an ugly hack is not needed and there is no > reason to push browser vendors into implementing it. It will fail on > older browsers. And there is no need for it, since one can use the > actual numbers instead of letting "0" have a most unnatural meaning. > Any document which needs to use ROWSPAN and COLSPAN that way are so > complex that they should be generated automatically from a simpler > structure anyway, and then it is most natural to let the generating > program handle this detail too. Except for cases where the content of the table is dynamic in nature. HTML 4.x allows for progressive rendering of tables, which can also be dynamic rendering of tables. Additional rows may appear dynamically, which means you really may not know how many rows there will be in the table. The case isn't as strong for COLSPANs of 0. In either case, this makes more work for me on a project I'm working on which deals with tables. I had support for ROWSPAN=0 and COLSPAN=0 as specified in HTML 4.0. Now I have to recode it so that it works with HTML 4.01 as well. >>>> o MAP can now contain both AREA and %block; simultaneously >>> Does this really improve accessibility? >> It would allow you to put the equivalent text links version of the >> imagemap links inside the MAP declaration, while still using AREA tags for >> browsers that don't handle the COORDS attribute for the A tag. > (You mean "for the AREA tag", don't you?) No, I mean the A tag. Check it out; A can also take SHAPE and COORDS attributes which is useful when it is encased in a MAP, functioning in relation to the imagemap the same way as AREA. And you still have TITLE for the (horrible) tooltips and a lot more flexibility for alternative text (full markup). I don't know how widespread support there is in browsers for this (%block; content wasn't allowed in HTML 3.2) but being able to mix them with AREA tags in HTML 4.01 gives double coverage for addressing any such lack of support, as well as support for those where MAP isn't recognized. (Indeed, "Note. MAP is not backwards compatible with HTML 2.0 user agents" can probably be dropped now since by allowing a mixture of AREA and %block;, MAP could be considered backwardly compatible if used by responsible authors). > Could be. I wonder how that will work in older browsers. For browsers that don't support client-side imagemaps, they can access the anchors, and for those that do, the anchors are suppressed and the imagemap works. The fallback for a USEMAP need not be an ISMAP. > And it seems > to be that when a client-side image map is used _meaningfully_, it is > inherently visual, so an alternative method should be provided quite > separately. Why? If the browser renders it visually, it is because the user is sighted and can discern the content of the image and follow the links. Otherwise the user is not sighted, and so you provide more useful markup for them than just a [USEMAP] link as found in lynx. > (And for the popular abuse of a map for messing up a > simple list of links, the ALT attributes would do just fine, if > authors just used them and browsers implemented the simple idea.) So why not let authors provide something better than something which is just fine for those non-visual and non-client-side-map users? Or the search engines for that matter? :: [on SELECT] > And this is a semantic requirement which is in definite contradiction > with HTML 2.0. Which makes it even more important that browsers do something with the DOCTYPE declaration. Some of the differences between HTML 4.0 and 4.01 will require it or the browsers will lose support of one or the other (or both). Not that the big two have ever been fully compliant to any version. Despite its goals, I doubt they were even fully compliant to HTML 3.2. (Do they yet support circle as an AREA type or bottom as a CAPTION alignment?) greg@apple2.com %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%% Christopher Glenn wrote: > I have a feeling that what I did is not a good idea, but the result > seems to look good to me, both in IE (5) and Netscape (4). What does that have to do with it? I think I can guess... > I have enclosed nearly all of the text on my site in Heading 4 (i.e., >

). When set to medium size in IE, it still looks good (although > to me the small size looks best), and also in Netscape. What you are telling the world (wide web) is that your entire text is in fact a fourth-level heading. This is surely not what you mean to say. Note that you are also telling this to search engines, etc., and consequently misleading them as well. Incidentally, in my experience Netscape tends to present the H4 element in the same font and size as ordinary body text, only in a bold version. Other browsers may present H4 as larger than body text. I would reserve H$ for fourth-level headings. You can also "suggest" the appearance of body text by using style sheets, but this is strictly optional, and not the highest priority for beginners. > But I use a > resolution of 1024x768, while I prefer to optimize for 800x600. That is a personal consideration, that is best addressed by setting your own browser defaults so that they are comfortable for you to read. > Please take a look at this representative page and give me: > 1. your advise as to font size and look > 2. your browser and version > 3. your screen resolution > 4. [experts] anything else you think this modest, self-taught, person > should know on this issue. My advice is to use hypertext markup (HTML) to describe honestly the content and structure of your document, without becoming obsessed with superficial appearance, which after all is largely beyond your control. As a person acquainted with Montessori education, you should be able to handle the paradigm shift necessary to this task. Learn to write HTML that is structurally clear and meaningful, and adapts well to any system and display (including non-visual ones), and that will be searched and indexed intelligibly (this is a different job from "making it look good" on selected platforms and configurations); then you can learn to use stylesheets to suggest cosmetic enhancements for some without shutting out or deceiving others. My own modest effort may prove helpful in this regard: http://www.mcsr.olemiss.edu/~mudws/webhints.html It is designed for thoughtful beginners who wish to understand this "paradigm shift" in preparation for advancing in hypertext authoring for the Web. Another essay, cited by its author in a newsgroup message this morning, is http://www.westciv.com/style_master/academy/articles/not_paper/ Good luck... Warren Steel %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%% Web Design Usability Principles (Heuristics) Speak the user's language Use words, phrases, and concepts familiar to the user. Present information in a natural and logical order. Be Consistent Indicate similar concepts through identical terminology and graphics. Adhere to uniform conventions for layout, formatting, typefaces, labeling, etc. Minimize the user's memory load Take advantage of recognition rather than recall. Do not force users to remember key information across documents. Build flexible and efficient systems Accomodate a range of user sophistication and diverse user goals. Provide instructions where useful. Lay out screens so that frequently accessed information is easily found. Design aesthetic and minimalist systems Create visually pleasing displays. Eliminate information that is irrelevant or distracting. Use Chunking Write material so that documents are short and contain exactly one topic. Do not force the user to access multiple documents to complete a single thought. Provide progressive levels of detail Organize information hierarchically, with more general information appearing before more specific detail. Encourage the user to delve as deeply as needed, but to stop whenever sufficient information has been received. Give navigational feedback Facilitate jumping between related topics. Allow the user to determine her/his current position in the document structure. Make it easy to return to an initial state. Don't lie to the user Eliminate erroneous or misleading links. Do not refer to missing information. revjack %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%% What response time will people tolerate before giving up? Considering that reaction times of humans are around 200ms, are there any rules of thumb (with references if possible) about what response times a user will consider: Excellent (presumably around 200ms?) OK Irritatingly slow Too slow to use? Kevin -------- Jakob Nielsen has written about response times on his useit.com web site. The article links are: Response Times: Three Important Limits: http://www.useit.com/papers/responsetime.html The Need for Speed: http://www.useit.com/alertbox/9703a.html Adil -------- Kevin wrote: > Considering that reaction times of humans are around 200ms, are there > any rules of thumb (with references if possible) about what response > times a user will consider: Hi, It's hard to quantify exactly, but research has shown that a generic user will begin to feel frustration after 7 seconds of inaction/response from an interface. The rule of thumb I use would be: Excellent: Under 1 second (basically instantaneous) OK: Less than four seconds Irritatingly slow: Five seconds or more Too slow to use: Depends... The 'too slow to use' really depends on context. The greater investment a user has in the interface, the more they will be prepared to wait. That doesn't mean they are happy to wait, they'll still get frustrated - but they may stick it out. There are a lot of factors at play - for example, people have a high level of expectation from a package locally installed (they expect speedy response), slightly less when the package runs over the network, and much less when they are accessing the internet. A five second delay when loading a web page would be quite acceptable to most people, but would be seen as frustrating when displaying a name and address in a local MS Access database. Some of the major factors are: 1. Users investment in the system 2. Users expectations of response 3. Users expectations of reward (how important their goal is to them and how confident they feel in achieving that goal with this interface) 4. Availability of alternative interfaces 5. Users experience with the rest of the software (ie if the whole thing is excellent and only the speed is slow, they might be prepared to wait longer). Gary Bunker ----------- Gary Bunker (gary@usability.uk.com) wrote: : It's hard to quantify exactly, but research has shown that a generic user : will begin to feel frustration after 7 seconds of inaction/response from : an interface. The rule of thumb I use would be: Don't forget that the variability of the response time affects user perceptions just as much as the average. An unpredictable response time is extremely frustrating because it forces you to concentrate on looking for the response; you don't feel like you can "shift gears" for even a moment without running the risk of wasting time (an analogy, based on one Gerald Weinberg used: most people would rather take a train that runs on average five minutes late, with a standard deviation of one minute, than one that runs on average exactly on time, with an SD of 10 minutes. You can plan your schedule around the former, but the only way to cope with the latter is to always leave yourself lots of extra slack time). Eric Bohlman ----------- BK wrote: > Gary Bunker wrote: > > > It's hard to quantify exactly, but research has shown that a generic user > > will begin to feel frustration after 7 seconds of inaction/response from > > an interface. The rule of thumb I use would be: > > Greetings--- > > Does this take into account cultural and/or age differences ? I would > imagine that a younger person would tolerate a shorter period of time... but > demand more graphic content at the same time !? No, it doesn't, and you're right - age and culture can have an affect on the 'acceptable' response time limit. So can past experience with computers, and the internet, what's on telly at the time, how many kids are waiting to throw mum/dad off the pc to play games, and a hundred other factors. Unfortunately there are so many possible impacts on 'acceptable' in this argument that we could never hope to truly pin it down, the figures could literally be different for every user and for every interaction of each user with a different interface. All we can do is to come up with rough guides, and I think the figures mentioned in this group are good enough for that job. Gary Bunker %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%% There are two ways to make a homepage: 1. Start out with some stuff and build the site around it. 2. Start out with building a site and then make stuff to put on it. %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%% noam wrote: > I think that a site is exactly like a good book !! a book have first a > hard volume ( bunch ) which is the outside look ( the frame of the book ) > which is the first thing people can see, & only than when they open the > boox they can see the first menu page ( index ) & after this the text > itself of the book !!! this is how i think it should be !! That's nice. But people don't pick a web page off the shelf, take it home, and sit down with it for 4 hours. And there aren't search engines that can lead you to flip through 20 books in under a minute. Books and the web are different media. Some things, such as what makes text easily readable to the human eye, apply to both. Other things, like optimal structuring and navigational tools, do not. > I see lot of sites on the internet that have a nice looking first entry > page with a ENTER link to the first page ( index / menu ) !! So you are not the only person who isn't able to make the leap from page to screen, and just sees the web as a fancy fax machine. miguel %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%% This nonsense over "market share" is silly. Minivans enjoy a significant share of the U.S. automobile market. They perform extremely poorly as boats, however, so I'm not going to consider them for a marine application. The same thing goes for trying to force a class of software called "HTML browser" into a presentation graphics role, or some other role where they are not the ideal choice, regardless to which of them enjoy some share of the browser market. Charles L. Taylor ------- Nick Lilavois wrote: >Widely available, but more people have MSIE4+ or NN4+ than >have Acrobat. I'll stick with DynamicHTML, thanks. Whatever. More people have sedans than flatbed delivery trucks, but when it comes to hauling a load of bricks, one vehicle class has a clear technical advantage over the other (regardless to "market share"). Still another vehicle type is a superior choice for hauling automotive fuel in large quantities, even though most every vehicle can carry some amount of fuel. Charles L. Taylor %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%% just one funny thing : if you manage to validate your web site as "STRICT HTML4 Compliant" via the http://validator.w3.org , you get a message : "congratulation, you can insert this code : -Web Developer Someone who works on databases, and shopping trolleys for e-commerce sites - basically a programmer, but programming for the web. Someone who knows HTML, Java, Javascript, DHTML (maybe), Perl, and the like. > -Web Master Someone running a website or web server - probably someone who is a mix of a designer and a developer. > -Web Author? Someone who writes content for a website. > ...and what are the standard salary rates for each? It would vary from region region, country to country. Over here in Ireland I guess a web master would get the best salary. You should note folks, that the descriptions above are just my views and opinions. Tom Cosgrave %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%% (Charles L. Taylor) writes: > > There's ALT text. > > [cue obvious "picture is worth a thousand words" rebuttal] Except that in this medium one picture costs at least as much as a thousand characters. You don't believe me? Take the 'w3c HTML 4.0' gif we have (I'm sure) all got on our home pages. It has eleven characters on it - eleven bytes worth of data. it's eighty-eight by thirty-one pixels. It's 11,141 bytes. It's a very simple image, no animation, no graduated tones. Web design includes lots of things, but one of those things is thinking about exactly that. Users don't like waiting for pages; the faster a site responds, the more likely users are to use it, and to keep using it. Text-as-graphics isn't just a designer's way of saying that (s)he isn't skilled enough to write decent HTML; it's a designer's way of saying (s)he just does not understand the medium (s)he's working in. Simon Brooke ------- Not strictly speaking true. Consider: The graphical information contained in a well-designed logo can convey information more quickly that characters which need to be read and interpreted abstractly every time. A simple image accesses visual (not textual) recognition areas of the brain, and can be identified as a pattern of shape and colour much more quickly than it can if read as text. Now also consider that the image in your example is downloaded only once by the typical browser (assuming one visit to the site every couple of weeks or so). After my thousandth visit, the economy of bandwidth ensures begins to work in its favour, because the text would be downloaded and parsed every time. Okay, okay -- the second para above gets a smiley. Here --> 8^) Seriously, though: I think you should amend the statement in your last paragraph above to say that indiscriminate use of text-as-graphics belies a failure to understand web design as a craft. There are a great many artists in the world, but the artists who are also good craftspeople tend to rise above. Dan McGarry %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%% InHouseBox wrote: > Would anyone be willing to discuss how to implement a Yahoo > type naviagtion system with search ability. > > i.e. how to store/retrieve/search/index a navigation > bar like. > > UK > England > South > Greater London > Fulham > > so that at each node! one could search for clients in that > area/town. > > Any offers of help before getting detail swamp. This javascript will print the path to the URL, with each directory in the path as a link. Maureen Fisher %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%