Defeating Pop-up stoppers please?

[Mark Parnell]

Sometime around 13 Nov 2003 06:13:58 GMT, Eric Bohlman is reported to have
stated:

I should think that
one of the corrolaries to Murphy's law would imply that if the two of you
chose any name in the top 1000 baby names, someone with a kid by that exact
name would immediately move into your community and enroll their child in
your wife's facility. Unless you chose the type of name that only a
celebrity would choose.

You would think so, but luckily the waiting lists are pretty long, so the
turnover of kids isn't too big.

There's always the possibility that she may look after someone with the
same name when she goes back to work, but that's not so bad.

Incidentally, we happened to pick a name that was one of the top 20 in
Australia last year, yet she hasn't looked after someone with that name.
There were definitely no celebrity-type names on our list though.

 

[Eric Bohlman]

HTML is fine, but I know nothing about js so rely on copy & paste.

You have to be really careful there. If you know very little about a
language, it logically follows that you know very little about how well-
written any piece of code in that language is. And unfortunately there's a
tremendous amount of junk floating around on the net. The cut-and-paste
approach can easily get you to learn a lot of bad habits that you'll
eventually have to unlearn, and that always winds up being a lot more work
than just learning it properly in the first place (it's what the Perl
community would call "false laziness"). Be truly lazy and put in the
little bit of up-front effort to learn a language properly from the
beginning. The reward for doing so is that you get to spend more time
coding and designing (things that most people like to do) and less time
debugging (which most people hate to do).

I will focus on content but my marketing mentors say "always have
popups". I believe the day for popups is past. It's like the
octagenarian ex-businessman saying "You gotta have a Telex boy!"

If your content and structure are solid, you can pile lots of bells and
whistles on them without hurting anything if you know what you're doing.
If they're weak, the bells and whistles will just make them weaker. If you
want to decorate a house, it's a lot easier to do if the walls don't fall
down when you hang something on them.

I'm beginning to believe that - I will have a "Click here for freebie"
thing so readers have a CHOICE of whether to go for freebie or not!

Ah, yes, the joys of "opt-in." What an amazing difference giving people
just a little bit of control makes. As some wag once said, it's not just
what you say, it's how you say it. A lot of the early commercial use of
the Web was developed by people who had little understanding of basic
psychology. The time when that would work has long since passed.

Just don't say "click here." You want to tell people what you can do for
them, not how to use their browser. Links and the text surrounding them
are "high-impact" statements, so they need to say things that the user
hasn't seen a million times before.

 

[DU]

Thanks DU.
Will stop multi-posting.
Candidly, when I started I did not even know the difference between Java,
Java Applets & JavaScript. After feedback I have also gone to FAQs &
Newsgroup Netiquette site. I will not multi-post in future.



I have learnt that one too!




HTML is fine, but I know nothing about js so rely on copy & paste.




I know basic HTML only - I use Hot Dog 5.

I recommend you hand code all your pages: this is known to be the best
way to learn. I recommend you use an advanced text editor (for coloring
code mostly and add templates).

By valid, I assume you mean that

it doesn't have stray <BR>s poking up into the page etc.
I don't know WHY tableless design but will take your word, and anothers,
for it.
Don't know CCS yet.

Here's a few urls for you to start with. I recommend highly these pages
for you and anyone who wants to learn good web design:

1- Web site guide
http://www.webstyleguide.com/index.html
Maybe a bit outdated at some spots but very good in general and very
much instructional.

2- Why tables for layout is stupid
http://www.hotdesign.com/seybold/
About 50% of all websites out there use tables or nested tables for
non-tabular data. Learn why it's bad and how to avoid that.

3- CSS Layout Techniques: Look Ma, No Tables. (for advanced)
http://glish.com/css/

4- Using Web Standards in Your Web Pages
http://www.mozilla.org/docs/web-developer/upgrade_2.html
I often refer to that page and I know many others have too. It's
javascript, DOM oriented a bit. Maybe a bit tough for a beginner.

5- Liquid Web Design: Build it right and it will work no matter what the
container.
http://www.digital-web.com/tutorials/tutorial_1999-10.shtml
Every now and then, tehre is a question on fluid design, scalable design
and that tutorial page is often mentioned.

6- Quality Tips for Webmasters by the W3C Quality Assurance
http://www.w3.org/QA/Tips/

7- My web site is standards! And yours?
http://www.w3.org/QA/2002/04/Web-Quality

8- CSS Tableless sites
http://www.meryl.net/css/

9- Web Authoring FAQ
http://www.htmlhelp.com/faq/html/

10- HTML help by the Web Design Group
http://www.htmlhelp.org/
I used that site a lot when I started back a few years ago.

Finally I recommend you use Mozilla 1.5 or higher to verify your pages,
validate them with Checky built in within the browser.

http://www.mozilla.org/releases/#1.5

http://checky.mozdev.org/index.html

DU

 

[DU]

You have to be really careful there. If you know very little about a
language, it logically follows that you know very little about how well-
written any piece of code in that language is. And unfortunately there's a
tremendous amount of junk floating around on the net. The cut-and-paste
approach can easily get you to learn a lot of bad habits that you'll
eventually have to unlearn, and that always winds up being a lot more work
than just learning it properly in the first place (it's what the Perl
community would call "false laziness"). Be truly lazy and put in the
little bit of up-front effort to learn a language properly from the
beginning. The reward for doing so is that you get to spend more time
coding and designing (things that most people like to do) and less time
debugging (which most people hate to do).

I absolutely entirely agree with you and what you said up there. I hope
Bill is also reading this.

The cut-N-paste approach is widely in use because there are many
copy-N-paste javascript site with a lot of junk code and invalid code
out there. The cut-N-paste approach is the worse way to learn.

If your content and structure are solid, you can pile lots of bells and
whistles on them without hurting anything if you know what you're doing.
If they're weak, the bells and whistles will just make them weaker. If you
want to decorate a house, it's a lot easier to do if the walls don't fall
down when you hang something on them.

Exactly. We share the same understanding

DU

 

[Bill]

Here's a few urls for you to start with. I recommend highly these pages
for you and anyone who wants to learn good web design:

then 1 to 10 links etc

I didn't want to lose your post so have printed out and will STUDY at a
later date.
I did structured programming way back in the 1980's but forgotten much.
Bill

 

[Toby A Inkster]

really must subscribe to the UK equivalent

It's called the TPS. <http://www.tpsonline.org.uk/>

I signed up a year or so ago and it has been very effective.

There are similar lists for Fax, Post and E-mail (although in the case of
E-mail, most spam I get comes from outside the UK anyway)

 

[Toby A Inkster]

There were definitely no celebrity-type names on our list though.

Not even "Sparkle Parnell"?

 

[Whitecrest]

Interestingly, I saw an article somewhere (wish I could find it again)
which showed, and supported with numbers, an interesting premise: if
Microsoft were to remove the code which allowed IE to do its guesswork
at code correction, and merely interpretted the code as parsed, the
application would be roughly half its current size.

That would not surprise me at all. We were privy to some Microsoft born
code a few years back at World Com. It was some of the worst spaghetti
code I have ever seen (I must admit it was a MFC com object, which since
has been replaced by ATL and WTL which make it much cleaner)

as people grow tired
of waiting for the next IE. Internet technology, browsers included,
moves too fast to leave a browser sitting idle for that long.

I seem to remember that there is going to be no next version of IE and
that it will be integrated into the OS. Personally I don't care who
wins (if anyone needs to win at all) but I do believe tat you have to
take into consideration what works on IE above what works on everything
else combined.

 

[Whitecrest]

The definition of 'Quality' is 'The way your customer experiences it'.

Probably one of the BEST definitions of Quality I have read!

 

[Nico Schuyt]

(e-mail address removed) wrote...

Probably one of the BEST definitions of Quality I have read!

It was indeed an eye opener for us and changed our whole policy in defining
product specifications and handling of complaints
Nico

 

[Kris]

as people grow tired
of waiting for the next IE. Internet technology, browsers included,
moves too fast to leave a browser sitting idle for that long.

I seem to remember that there is going to be no next version of IE and
that it will be integrated into the OS. Personally I don't care who
wins[/QUOTE]

I hope the user wins. And whatever the user chooses, I don't care. Once
choice is removed, the user loses.

(if anyone needs to win at all) but I do believe tat you have to
take into consideration what works on IE above what works on everything
else combined.

Isn't the first a subset of the latter, instead of two opposing forces?

 

[nice.guy.nige]

Yea, it was a silly comment, but I get tired of the same old
arguments. (You must agree that it goes in cycles around here...)

That was just a silly comment. I'm sorry Whitecrest....... oh... hang on!
;-)

Cheers,
Nige

--
Nigel Moss.

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