Re: [OT] flash n stuff

[Arclight <arclight@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Von Robert J. Hansen :

> > That's like "I own a Ford Model T, why can't I drive on the Autobahn?".
>
>More like, "I own a Mercedes, not a Ford, why can't I drive on the
>Autobahn?"  A great many engineers prefer UNIX to Windows because it
>gives considerably better performance.

Ok, what's the percentage of engineers using UNIX boxes from "all people 
surfing the web". Last I heard, "industry" standard fo website is 1024x768, 
IE 5.x . Most people for now stick with the older one, 800x600, IE4 or 
Netscape 4.x (or was it 4.5?) because they want to reach more people. The 
effort to design a website for any "minority browser" or "outdated piece oc 
cr4p" (=lynx ;) is just too damn high, and IMHO just doesn't makes sense. 
At least economically.

<snip>

>People who write HTML specifically for specific OSes and browsers are
>missing the point.  Content and presentation are separate.

Well, as long as most browser interpret HTML different, there's no real choice.

> > Somewhat egocentric (sp?), if you ask me. For a lot of websites, the 
> design
> > is a valid part of the content, or better, "message", you want to
> > "broadcast". And also, the design, of course _with_ the content, makes you
> > remember a website.
>
>Yep.  And you're allowed to give suggestions about layout.  But if I,
>for whatever reason, want to render all emphasized text in italics,
>that's my prerogative.  If I want to turn off all inlined images and
>rely on ALT tags instead, that's my prerogative.  If I want to run it in
>800x600 (like I do on my laptop, because anything more than that is
>unreadable), then that's my prerogative.

You can do that, but don't "bother" me with "I can't fully use your site".

>Sites which make assumptions about what kind of machine they're
>displaying on are fragile and broken.  Look at Jet Li's homepage, which
>is very Flash-heavy.  It's a media event, yep.  Looks real nice on
>Windows 2K, IE 5.5 and Flash.  Looks like crap on WebTV and isn't even
>renderable on a Palm.  Nor is it accessible to the disabled.

Seems to me he thought about who will access his site, and did his best to 
make it enjoy them. I once did a website for my counter-strike clan, and as 
most young kiddies out there have rather fast computers, chose 1024x768. It 
wasn't standard back then, but fully reflected the capabilities of my 
"target group".

>When you're writing a webpage, the thing to remember is you get to
>*suggest* layout, but you don't get to *specify* anything but the
>content.  A lot of places think they get to specify layout, and it means
>that their pages break horribly the instant someone does something
>strange, like "disable in-page fonts, always use my defaults".  Or "make
>all backgrounds plain white and all foreground text black".

When you start to "suggest", IMHO it will look crappy on every browser. So 
I make it look good on the majority, and skip the rest. Isn't perfect, but 
works for me.

<snip>

> > I don't think that's a bad thing :) , at least when it's no ugly as hell...
>
>You need three things for a good webpage: standards-compliance, content,
>and consistency.  Standards-compliance is essential because you don't
>know what your client is viewing it on.  When I'm browsing the Web from
>home on my Win2K box on a 22" monitor cranked up to 1600x1200, I have
>much different display requirements from my UNIX box on a 17" monitor,
>which has much different display requirements from my UNIX laptop.  All
>three of them use different browsers, to boot: my Win2K box uses IE 5.5,
>my UNIX box uses a Mozilla nightly build, and my laptop uses Netscape
>Communicator 4.75.  (Oh, and I've got another box (which I rarely use)
>which runs BeOS 5 with NetPositive in 1600x1200.)

But if you have time restraints, of even pay someone to do up a website for 
you, you IMHO better invest your time /money in something other than making 
it accessible (sp?) for outdated or exotic browsers.

<snip>

>Every single time there was a problem, the problem stemmed from either
>(a) a lack of standards compliance on the *browser's* part (they were
>quite good about writing standard-adherent HTML, but IE 4.0 and NS 4.7x
>aren't very standard-compliant), or (b) a failure on their part to
>properly separate content from presentation.

Doing a website and having problems with IE/NS is bad.

>What Roger is talking about here shouldn't be a surprise to anyone.  So
>he uses an older Pentium system on a 28.8K connection--so what?  With a
>properly-designed site, that shouldn't matter a damn.  He should be able
>to turn off inlined images in his Web browser to speed up page
>downloads, turn off Javascript, and still be able to access the
>important content.

Sure, no problem with me. But he shouldn't complain about it that the site 
looks bad.

Arclight