Re: CSS for positioning

[Jeremy J Starcher]

http://barefile.com.au/screenshot/n.jpg

Screen shots are good.
Screen shots in JPG are bad.

Just as a friendly note, if you ever need people to be able to read the
text on your screen shot, make sure you use PNG instead. The non-lossy
format will come as a blessing on the eyes.

 

[Jonathan N. Little]

What's you're point? Gigantic websites such as the news links I posted like
msnbc.com, cnn.com, foxnews.com, etc... all use keywords on their pages. I'm
sure I could find many many more sites like those just by doing a google
search.. which would also mean that those sites are crawled by google very
well.

They may but is google as a factor to index the sites or just the
content? Your posistion was that you could use keywords in lieu of
content which is wrong because search engines have stop using keywords
since the abuse back in the late 90's.

 

[Jeremy J Starcher]

I think many people here want to strive for perfection in code and
functionality, but that isn't very practical in the real world that I
work in.

I don't think that word means what you think it means.

I know I don't speak for everyone, but I'd be surprised of the majority
of people here strive for "perfection" assuming we could even come up a
common consensus on what that word means.

What we want is:

A) Functional on the broadest range of devices.
(So what when the boss goes out and buys that latest wizbang phone and
views the company website, he won't be throwing a hissy fit.)

B) The easiest to create/update and maintain.
Good coders, according to Larry Wall, are lazy. We want to do the least
work for the maximum reward.


C) Accessible.
True, this could be a subset of (A) but it deserves its own block. Some
of us work in fields where accessibility is not just a good idea, it is a
legal requirement. For instance, one of the sites I'm helping to build
is for a historical society ... and I dare say the youngest person in
that group is about 50, with the average age of 70. These folks have
their computers set up with a bigger-than-usual font. Since side-to-side
scrolling is /horrid/, the page must have a liquid layout and must just
work ... (I've not talked to any of the blind members about the site,
but at the same time, they haven't complained... At least not after I
put in a 'skip to content' link.)



I know that I (and many other web builders) don't care about "pixel-
perfect" .. we want this box on that site, this box at the top and maybe
this box at the bottom. If it doesn't look /exactly/ the same between IE
and Fx and the cell phone and whatever, oh well. It looks good at
anything we load it on and the minor variations are just that ... minor.

 

[Jeremy J Starcher]

It's impossible to predict if a page will work in future browsers, and
also impossible to get a page to work 100% for 100% of the people. You
will spend so much time trying when you can move on to a different
project.

At the same token, I cannot predict 100% much of anything, but I can go
a /long/ way towards pushing the odds in my favor.

Coding to the standards. It is /very/ unlikely that a browser released
today that doesn't follow standards will become popular.

I can let HTML do what HTML was *meant* to do ... not care about what it
was displayed on.

(VERY important piece of history about HTML. HTML was /not/ meant to
display on a computer screen. It was meant to display on /everything/.
Literally. The design goal of HTML was 'This is what I mean .. hey you,
think that shows me. Figure out how I'll look best.'

The advent of the 'font' element, as well as 'i' and 'bold' were a major
step in the wrong direction and pushed HTML where it never should have
gone and now we are fighting to bring it back.

Properly structured HTML using the best practices, will remain viewable
on things now -- and into the future.)

 

[Jeremy J Starcher]

ADD some keywords to the page.

Add keywords to your list of obsolete knowledge.

 

[Jenn]

Well, some items are panoramic and therefore have different aspect
ratios.

This example would work using at least 3 pages each using a different aspect
ratio. You can insert each one into a tab of an AJAX box, thus never making
the user have to leave the page, and increasing time spent. Insert keywords
for Google to crawl.

http://tinyurl.com/2jcs5r

 

[dorayme]

What this hell is it with all this damn gender bashing?

Who is doing this? Get yourself a sense of humour. Nothing
depended on the *man* in the expression two man act, it just so
happens that great comic duo acts are mostly men. True there have

I am getting
quite fed up with it!

Then stop imagining untrue things and get yourself a sense of
humour. And stop replying. Forget about it. Let me have the last

It is *total* irrelevant! The only organ a play
here is the brain, and if more individuals would utilize them the
discussion would progress less acrimoniously. Can we get back to
discussing HTML?

This is totally irrelevant to the point about about whether to
hint or to spell out an important thing about search engine
robots. See the serious points being hinted at. Maybe you are not
so great at getting hints. Maybe many of us are not in various
contexts.

Here is a little tidbit that I have discovered about things. Yes, there
is always more than one way to do something successfully, but there are
always some ways which are wrong and will be unsuccessful.

Who has ever disputed this?

Jonathan, there is very little point in talking to me about
anything, everyone realises this eventually. Keep your blood
pressure down.

 

[dorayme]

Screen shots are good.
Screen shots in JPG are bad.

Just as a friendly note, if you ever need people to be able to read the
text on your screen shot, make sure you use PNG instead. The non-lossy
format will come as a blessing on the eyes.

I have my screenshots on my Macs set to png. They always look
very good indeed. It may not be so simple to do this on a Windows
box?

 

[Jenn]

Why is it not perfect enough ("perfection enough" was the phrase
I used) for thumbs that are all the same size with very short
captions?

I suppose if it works for what he wants to do, then it would be perfect in
that respect, but he also has various ratio images to display, to it won't
work to display all of them unless he either has separate pages or some sort
of way to load the pages with a variant ratio. AJAX works good for that,
and so could iframes (which I imagine some people will hate that suggestion,
too.)

Never mind this milkman. <g> I was just saying how here is a case
of js doing a job that is nice but not crucial and so it is not
super important if a few people have their js off, they still get
to see the photos of anyone using this simple template.

I was sort of wondering why I don't see text posts from Bootnic and only see
attachments.

 

[Jenn]

Ignore validation and you can pretty much guarantee it will fail. Do you
think that is a wise strategy? Also dismissing what you do not understand
is your problem, it is not that difficult to get a page to work in all
browsers. Of course avoiding pixel-perfect layouts can go a long way and
embrace a more flexible approach to design.

Validation may be fine for small hobby sites, but I don't see it as being
practical for gigantic sites with constantly changing dynamic content, imo.

 

[dorayme]

They may but is google as a factor to index the sites or just the
content? Your posistion was that you could use keywords in lieu of
content which is wrong because search engines have stop using keywords
since the abuse back in the late 90's.

What is important is good meaningful headings in the body text,
using words in the opening paragraphs of a page that are
appropriate to the website and quite natural but which are also
likely to be asked for in searches. Clients can place paid ads if
they want to get ahead of the pack, meta keywords don't much work
these days, Jonathan is right.

 

[Jonathan N. Little]

Jonathan, there is very little point in talking to me about
anything, everyone realises this eventually. Keep your blood
pressure down.

Blood pressure is fine I just have to quit monitoring these past two
threads... not much value in them... so to contrary your post was
beneficial, I should lay off Usenet and do the Ubuntu upgrades to my
servers and get back to my new site design. Ciao!

 

[Jenn]

Who is doing this? Get yourself a sense of humour. Nothing
depended on the *man* in the expression two man act, it just so
happens that great comic duo acts are mostly men. True there have


Then stop imagining untrue things and get yourself a sense of
humour. And stop replying. Forget about it. Let me have the last


This is totally irrelevant to the point about about whether to
hint or to spell out an important thing about search engine
robots. See the serious points being hinted at. Maybe you are not
so great at getting hints. Maybe many of us are not in various
contexts.


Who has ever disputed this?

Jonathan, there is very little point in talking to me about
anything, everyone realises this eventually. Keep your blood
pressure down.

I like you, dorayme.. and I appreciate how you express what you are wanting
to say.

 

[Jenn]

And ... as others have said ... the most important visitor to your
website doesn't have Javascript .....

Google is not the most important visitor to your website... your target
customer is.

Google will adapt and crawl your site just fine if you remember to include
keywords within your page and not just in the meta tag.

 

[Jenn]

They may but is google as a factor to index the sites or just the content?
Your posistion was that you could use keywords in lieu of content which is
wrong because search engines have stop using keywords since the abuse back
in the late 90's.

No they haven't stopped using keywords. On every site that I posted
previously, they all had keywords and description meta tags. I'm guessing
they don't use those for their health.. right?

 

[Jenn]

It means that the site should be usable without Javascript. You may, if
you wish, use Javascript to add features and make the site easier to use.

Let me give you a concrete example (once again, my online store)

http://parts.mopedepot.com/pbook.php?section=7&sectionid=7&book=0&page=7

Your site is nice and it works how you want it to work, but larger sites
don't have the time or intent even to make their site work in such a way.

I've seen many sites that specifically post in their footer or nav
somewhere... "This site is best viewed with JS enabled" or "This site is
best viewed in 'browser name'. If someone wants to view that site, then
they view it as it was designed to be viewed.

I understand working towards perfecting a site to be viewed under any
circumstance, but that may be overkill for many sites as they don't have
that kind of viewer hits to warrant that kind of time spent coding it... if
that makes sense.

 

[dorayme]

Jonathan, there is very little point in talking to me about
anything, everyone realises this eventually. Keep your blood
pressure down.

I like you, dorayme.. and I appreciate how you express what you are wanting
to say.[/QUOTE]

It is sweet of you to say so.

 

[Jenn]

I don't think that word means what you think it means.

I know I don't speak for everyone, but I'd be surprised of the majority
of people here strive for "perfection" assuming we could even come up a
common consensus on what that word means.

I know that I (and many other web builders) don't care about "pixel-
perfect" .. we want this box on that site, this box at the top and maybe
this box at the bottom. If it doesn't look /exactly/ the same between IE
and Fx and the cell phone and whatever, oh well. It looks good at
anything we load it on and the minor variations are just that ... minor.

I feel the same way about sites I create...

 

[Jeremy J Starcher]

I have my screenshots on my Macs set to png. They always look very good
indeed. It may not be so simple to do this on a Windows box?

Depends on the tool being used for the screen shot. Been so long since
I've done as screen shot under windows I forget what its default it ...
but I /think/ it just copies it to the clipboard. When I do a screen
shot from the browser, there is a nice Fx plugin that gets the whole
document including scroll.

(Mostly a Ubuntu user here...)

 

[Beauregard T. Shagnasty]

No they haven't stopped using keywords. On every site that I posted
previously, they all had keywords and description meta tags. I'm
guessing they don't use those for their health.. right?

No, the fact is those sites *also* don't know that google and the other
major search engines stopped reading meta keywords over ten years ago,
due to webmaster/authors stuffing with sex-oriented words just to gain
more hits.

It is a fact. Accept it.