dregenrocks

I know I don't but that way you know why I made the desiscion that I did.

Mr Creosote

Well thats strange, ASP and Object in one and the same post ... wierd

Whow, one big thing you don't see: W3C-Standards only define what the sentence "it works" means. If W3C doesn't define what a correct page has to look like, then browser vendors would do and I don't have to remember you on Netscape 4.x or IE 5.x, do I? Those tried to define standards and "what is working" on their own and the mess they created is still present.

Some (random) links about this:
http://www.thesitewizard.com/webdesign/htmlvalidation.shtml
http://valet.htmlhelp.com/page/why.html
http://validator.w3.org/docs/help.html#why-validate
http://validator.w3.org/docs/why.html

And those articles don't even try to cover the subject "barrier-free", which base is standard-compilant code. Try the worst-case scenario and visit your site with a text-browser and let it read to you by a screen-reader as if you were blind.

As a private publishers we may say, this is not important. But for example german public administration is forced by law to be barrier-free in every way. (currently they are 'still working on this... )

Edited by dregenrocks at 09:42 on May, 12th 2005

Obviously not. "It works" means that my site is displayed correctly in browsers that are halfway up-to-date. In order to check this, I use my eyes. It is completely irrelevant whether the site "doesn't work" in theory according to W3C standards.

However, that doesn't mean I refuse their work. Standards have to be integrated to the browsers' engines. It's not my task to spread them.


They didn't create the mess. Stupid webmasters are the ones to blame. My sites have always been viewable with any contemporary browser although I've never cared about standards.


No, the worst scenario is a blind and deaf guy without arms in North Korea who isn't able to read German and doesn't have a computer. I don't go there and enable him to view my site anyway. If I wanted to maximize the number of people who could potentionally view and understand my site, I'd probably make a text-only page in Chinese or English which is compatible with a C64 browser.


Which is good. Unlike me, they have a public duty to make their information accesible to as many people as possible.

Yes, and "up-to-date" means (mainly) the implementation of current standards.

If you don't care about those standards you can't ensure you pages are correctly interpreted on every platform. They are interpreted differently by different browser-engines, in a much slower, more memory intense way. You can check this youself. Just load 50 Quirks-Pages into Firefox and check you memory-usage.


Both sides are guilty.


Come on, that's not what I meant. But ff you have a valid HTML-page, it's of course compatible with C64-browser and can easily be translated into english or chinese (XML-conformity)...

No, there are blind german individuals browsing through the WWW, who may be interested in the content of your site, if you believe it or not. Even if these are a small minority, they deserve to be thought of a second. And also think about color-blind people. Approximately between 3%-5% percent are color-blind or have problems with colors (red/green for example).


Yes. But why don't care on the otherside, if it is not a public duty?

Edited by dregenrocks at 14:04 on May, 13th 2005

Yes, but I don't use them because they are standards but because they work.


Of course I can't. That's a) impossible anyway b) not my aim. However, you can't ensure this by applying standards either.


You apparently think that I deliberately want to exclude people. That is completely wrong. I've always wanted to make my sites accessible to many people. I chose the way of focusing on practical usability and not theoretical correctness, though. That's why I tested my sites with all current browsers and platforms that were available to me.

However, accessibility is not a one side task. I take care of a code that can easily be interpreted by any browser. The users have to satisfy a certain degree of technological and intellectual standards to view and read my site. That means: Both sides meet in the middle.

I have done my part by providing the contents and coding a site that can be viewed by 99% of all internet users. If someone still uses Lynx or can't read, I can't help him. Moreover, if you really wanted to catch as many people as possible, you'd also have to drop standards in form and content (for example by using a simplified language). But I won't do that because I can bear with a small group of people who don't meet the technological, physical or intellectual standards. My site neither is a business nor does it serve public interest; therefore a number of people (estimated < 1 per cent) who can't access my site is fully tolerable.


I care a lot about it. The number of people who can't view my site is extremely low, and it wouldn't be smaller if I applied 100% standards. Caring about the audience is not an issue of following standards. It's an issue of usability - and that's what I try to provide. Using standards doesn't significantly increase usabilty; in the past, it rather decreased it.

Actually, if you design a site not only by the letters of those standards, but also follow the recommendation to seperate content and markup completely, you'll always have true 100% who can read your site. Nothing without a cost, though - the site will not look the same for as many people as when you code 'classically'. Oh well - nothing is perfect.

Yes, but I don't use them because they are standards but because they work.
[/quote]
And they work, because they are standards...


Yes.

Most people I know in my former biz - web programming, or Dynamic WebApplication Development, as the marketroids prefer to call it - are really fed up with the 100s of 'standards' and 'guidelines' thrown at them. Nobody reads any W3C stuff other than the few references in their favourite IDE.

So when you do a site from scratch (like you ought to - I agree with Mr C.), check it with the one-before-last version of IE and show it to the managers. When they're happy, check it with Mozilla and Konqueror and cut out any code that doesn't work there. One last check through Lynx (if Lynx likes it, Google will), and then back to IE to make sure the managers will still see something they can vaguely remember.

Personally, I found that anything that works and looks okay in Konqueror (I'm on KDE 3.1) comes out fine in all browsers. Heavy Javascript and DHTML is a no-no, so that gets scrapped immediately. Anything fancy will start to look stale after a few visits anyway. And the less whizzbang you feature, the less user mail you'll get about "your INTERNET being BROKEN coz I can't see the moving CLOWN!!!"

I meant it a little differently, because I was only talking about private 'hobby' sites. Let me try to explain it again: If you're starting a new site which didn't exist before, I'm all for following the standards and recommendations, at the expense of (lookalike-) compatibility with old browsers. It's perfectly possible to still find its audience then, because this 'incompatibility' has been a part of the site from the start.

However, if you're just redesigning a site which has already been there, it's a little different. There already are regular visitors, many of which will use old browsers. If you suddenly present them with a new design which just won't show up 'right' for them, they'll complain along the lines of "it worked before, so why can't it now". Quite a good point, actually.

That should be the basic rule of webdesign anyway. Keep it simple. For example, if you're planning to do a site completely or predominantly in Flash, better think again...

Hehe - the worst problem about this whole issue is actually exactly this: visitors don't understand it's sometimes their fault something's 'not working'. That's why they are so tardy with upgrading browsers and so on.

How about a user's licence, like for cars or firearms..? I bet that would free up a lot of bandwidth.

When creating a new web-presence, there is no reason to ignore those 2(!) standards and there are a lot of reasons to base on those, regarding technical- and morale issues.

If professionals ignore those industry-standards, they aren't professional anymore, especially if they take money for their work.

For me, these standards are on the same level, as industry standards for tools, materials, dimensions and so on. What if every mechanic would use its own pro-prietary set of screws or every electicians would have its own color code for cables? Not good.


Not a good idea. There would have to be an international standard for this...

btw. I have to admit, the word standard is a bit overused lately...

What ardell describes is quite true, though. Even though the professionals might care about the standards, the money people who make the decisions don't. They just want it to look good on their own computer and money people generally love Microsoft stuff...

You're right sadly. Another reason to "shout" it out.

Web-Development is still a very young "industry". I hope time and tenacity will do it.

Standards are great, but they are useless if they are not implemente by the industry themself. All that we can do is to follow them where we can but in the end the website needs to work, so breaking a rule where needed is not a to big a problem if you ask me.

This is exactly the crux of the matter, what I wanted (and was not able) to point out. If you start to break rules to satisfy the current implementation, you automatically take part in the consolidation of those quirks.

In my (current) opinion, this has to be avoided at any cost. If browsers don't do what my mark-up und stylesheet say, it's the fault of the browser, not mine. This has to be said and we have to be stubborn enough to stand to it and force browser vendors to do correct. The time to bend and to twist ourselves for imperfect software is over.

And it's is already happening. Opera and Gecko are near 100% (correct) implementation of HTML and CSS standards, even of the JavaSript-DOM. While this point of view has taken its way into mind of a lot of web-developers, even the IE promises to become better in that matter (IE 7.0). Opera even advertises with it.

Long spoken, thin sense: It's the question, who is in control of whom.

Edited by dregenrocks at 14:11 on May, 18th 2005

Well, that's completely diffenent argument than "caring about the users". In fact, it's imposible to care about the users this way because you would implement standards even if none of them was working.


My point is that it's absolutely no problem to write code that is compatible with any browser. Do it as simple as possible and without childish extras (historical: "Marquee") and it's going to work. It's not a twist for me.


Right, but you're always kept under control - following standards doesn't free you. Either you're a slave of the borwsers or you're a slave of standards. No big diffenrece.

My main aim is to have people enjoy my site, no matter if the site is fully compatile with the standards. I moght add that if the standards were all implemented correctly on every browser, I would have no problem to follow them

And like Tapuak already said, standards don't free you, but it does help you to avoid common mistakes and makes it easier to use diffrent products transparently.

So why would the vendors want to make it very easy for you to switch ... mmmh

:D We keep running in circles...


It's different, but not contrary, since none of the standard-elements would destroy content or would make it unreadable. It's just not parsed. And if I did correct, the user can just disable the whole CSS and view a pure text-version, with his client-side CSS. This clear and stict partition of design and content is one of the main goals of the WWW-standards.


Again the other direction. The browser has to be compatible with my pages. And it it automatically, downwards and upwards, if I rely on standards.


Oh, there is a huge difference. I prefer to slave myself to the social consensus, instead of proprietarity. I prefer to be the slave of the metrics system, instead of different feet-sizes, as I prefer to be the slave of the industry-standard, instead of being the slave of a single company. In fact, I'm not a slave anymore, since I am part of that industry and may bring in my small part into this industry consenus.


As already stated, in my opinion a valid page is one of the foundations to ensure people enjoy your site. The imperfect implementation of those standards doesn't hinder you to use them.


Because they are members of the club already.

Edited by dregenrocks at 09:32 on May, 19th 2005

Hang on a sec, you don't seriously think that more than 1% of the people viewing a site have any idea of CSS, let alone of user interaction with same, do you..?

Re. putting one's foot down in general: have any of you done this for a living? Under management, that is. Believe me, any - if not all - of your good intentions will be out of the window as soon as it's show-and-tell time in the conference room. Managers are so smart, they can even tell you how to design, code, and structure an industry-grade web application, no matter the fact that you've been doing this for years.

After that, it's QA's turn. They'll tell you that you simply MUST have Flash, a scrolling applet, and a big registration box on the entry page, as well as links (via large jagged logos that the company owner's 17-yr old daughter designed) to all other sites the client owns/is affiliated with, whether relevant or not.

At that stage, the manager has probably seen someone (on a pr0n site, most likely) use custom cursors, so you'll have to incorporate one of those.

I can go on for a while, but it's easier to just list the 3 golden rules:

- the manager's printer set-up is your site's geometric yardstick;
- the manager's screen settings determine your site's colour scheme;
- the manager's BMS (Blink & Marquee Saturation) level will decide whether your site will look like a Gropius or a Trump building.

In all other cases, i.e. non-employed, self-employed, or private projects, you're all correct in one way or another. Fact is, only really large companies (who are confident in knowing that the whole world knows what they're selling) or equally large public service-oriented organisations (who have nothing to sell) produce good-looking, correctly coded sites. I was lucky to have been involved in work for the CE's online services, and only met with knowledgeable techs and tech-educated managers. Solid technology (no MS, and there is now a definite opening toward OSS), and good practice rigourously enforced. By the way, almost every IT head honcho at the various agencies and services I met was German. Gr?ndlichkeit pays off in the end, it seems. Except in the private sector.