Date: 21 Nov 1999 03:48:12 +0100 From: naddy@mips.rhein-neckar.de (Christian Weisgerber) To: freebsd-advocacy@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Get out and advocate something Message-ID: <817mhc$5je$1@bigeye.rhein-neckar.de> References: <3835F3D6.46536837@softweyr.com> <8168sp$drd$1@bigeye.rhein-neckar.de> <3837358F.B3ACE37E@owp.csus.edu>
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Joseph Scott <joseph.scott@owp.csus.edu> wrote: > I know that I'm usually looking at in X using Netscape 4.51 on > my FreeBSD box. My res is 1152x864 ( or something like that ) so > I resize my Netscape window to 800x600. You mention "the default > window size" for Netscape, in what res? If there are no prior saved preferences, Netscape seems to come up with 540x686. I actually like that "peephole". (My screen size is typically 1152x864.) > Believe me, we're more than willing to take suggestions that would > make your browsing the Daily site easier. I sent several suggestions to Chris that translate to rather minor changes in the actual code: - If you don't autoload images, the replacement text for the "join eGroups" image disproportionally blows up the width of the nav bar. Shorten the ALT/NAME text. - For the articles, drop the NOWRAP attribute. It keeps the articles from resizing to fit the canvas width. A wrapped title line is far preferable to having to scroll horizontally. - *All* images should have ALT attributes. For decorative fluff like the corner GIFs, ALT="" is not only okay but in fact preferable. - Unless you run into trouble with clipping of important ALT text (in Netscape with image loading off), all images should be specified with HEIGHT and WIDTH attributes. These changes make the page already quite presentable on Netscape and w3m and they're orthogonal to Chris' own first attempt. Links appear in their default color, in white, and in black. This is needlessly confusing. Links should look the same throughout a site (and page!) and preferably not differ from the default we're used to. Adapting the page to lynx will require more work. lynx is great for viewing the structure of a web page. Unfortunately, in this case it reveals that there is little structure from an HTML point of view. The headlines of the articles aren't HTML headers (Hn). The text is not contained in a paragraph (P). All the "structure" you see in Netscape derives from explicitly specifying presentation details (placing everything in nested tables, using FONT). You're using what is intended for visual sugar to carry the actual semantics. Lynx simply doesn't handle the presentation details. As people tend to remark, using lynx to view a hypertext page pops the pretty soap bubbles and leaves you with the substance. I'm not sure whether the above makes sense to anybody but denizens of comp.infosystems.www.authoring.html, where this ground is covered, oh, about daily. > Just realize that we all still have normal day jobs, so it may > take a little time before we get everything just right. And, as I also mentioned to Chris, if you want to get things *right* rather than accidentally working (or not) with the various browsers' error handling routines, you should run the page through a validator. I'd go for HTML 4.0/Transitional compliance. -- Christian "naddy" Weisgerber naddy@mips.rhein-neckar.de To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-advocacy" in the body of the message
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