Re: I have a problem with this:

[Jenn]

Perfect? No, it's not that it's not perfect, it's that it's bad.

No.. it isn't BAD ... it's not perfect and up to some validators standard.
It worked for what it was created to do, and was good enough for the client
.....

Some of the sites look pretty good, unless your font size is set a
little too large, then your tables just blow-up and the site looks
terrible.

So? That still doesn't make me a TROLL, for goodness sakes.........

You have expressed absolutely no interest in learning anything about why
your code sucks, and it does honestly suck, so it's hard to take you at
all seriously.

I've expressed no interest in being gang attacked by people I don't know who
feel they are God's gift to the html world. Lighten up. I didn't show
ya'll my links so you could rip them apart. I showed you some sites I
designed and built 5 to 10 yrs ago. If I wanted to, I would rip each one of
you equally just based on what I see visually, but I don't do that because
it's bad form and does nothing to accomplish good communication or
understanding. Why would anyone want to take the advice of people who all
they can do is attack you?

Your sites could easily be standard compliant (or even a
lot more compliant than they are) which would make them look good AND be
functional if, for example, someone increases the font size because they
can't read 10pt text.

That's nice, but they are all just examples of design and basic
functionality. They aren't meant to be perfect.

The worst thing is that making some of those sites compliant would be
pretty easy.

Maybe it would.. but why would I want ya'll advice at this point? I'd
probably more apt to listen to dorayme than the rest of you.

 

[Jenn]

I used to say that about frames. Anyway, the site is up and some of
the bugs are even worked out of it. There are several tables (but
don't expect it to be what you expect.)
http://www.moviegnu.com

I like it .. loads quickly, too. Have you thought about using a pagination
script and putting the imgs into categories people can scroll through and
then having the target page load below the category images? That way people
would not have to leave the start page, and it would increase your time
spent on that page.... another idea... Possibly using slightly smaller
thumbnails, with a mouseover within that pagination script that would give
them a larger image and a tooltip text description of the image?

If you or someone with virgin ie7 could check it in that, I'd
appreciate it.

I'm using IE7 ...

 

[Jenn]

The point of all this "perfect code" (validating, trying to use things
that are properly specified, not relying on browser quirks) is that it's
supposed to make things easier and cheaper so you make more money.

Time you spend trying to understand how things are supposed to work
saves you much more time the next time you have a weird problem to fix
and it takes 5 minutes instead of 5 days of guessing.

Thus far, I very rarely take longer than a few hours to fix any issue.
Designing new functionality into a complicated site that contains various
files that have to interact with each other is another story, tho. Getting
server code written by a committee to interact with aspx.config pages and
aspx pages and ascx pages and includes and video files, and rss feeds, and
flash files, etc, ad naseum .... can take a bit more time to figure out,
plus getting it to work on multiple browsers... BUT, once the code is
written and the interactivity is confirmed to work properly, it's used over
and over again.

 

[Jenn]

Jenn, this is Usenet, and you have to have a thick skin. Even though
they sound harsh, they really are being nice, because they are trying to
help you.

I seriously doubt that cursing at me is going to help me in any way shape or
form.... additionally, I'm fairly easy to get along with when people want to
interact and discuss just about anything. I really don't take kindly to
bullies or anyone who consider themselves to be God's gift to anything.
They aren't helping me at all... they are trying to bulldoze and bully me
into believing they are good at something, and in doing so they put me down
and what I have done in the past to earn a living they critique into
oblivian. Back off a little, if that is their intent.

You will be a better designer, if you follow standards. Separate
presentation from structure. Stop using deprecated elements and
attributes, most of which have been replaced in favor of CSS.

I'm already a better designer than the people here who have shown me their
example websites.... that's just a fact. I really don't need to be here in
order to learn anything new because the web has anything I could ever
imaging I'd need, and all I have to do is search it out on the fly, and
walaa... I'm here because I thought it would be fun to interact with other
people who like building websites, and I don't really need anyone to tell me
what I do sucks. CSS isn't my first language, but I use it, and it's
interesting to learn more about it, but I don't need to immerse myself into
it to make a living.

You have a good eye for design, but your sites are jerky when rendering.
I looked at them using Opera, and they were slow to load.

I have an excellent eye for design.. always have. If you or anyone else
here thinks that 5 to 10 year old sites are the sum total of my skill set,
you're mistaken... and ragging on me about old sites will not make me open
up the any ideas ya'll may have.

Since you are good at visual design, and like to cut up images, you
might want to look into CSS sprites. There is an excellent article
about it at http://www.alistapart.com/articles/sprites.

Thanks....... I'll take a look.

 

[Jenn]

Adrienne, you have just made me spill my wine over the desk. You
cannot see that some here want to dismember her and eat her
liver! There is a famous model for being as optimistic as you,
namely Dr. Pangloss from Voltaire's Candide. <g>

ROFLOL ... I REALLY do like you!! haaaaaahaha

 

[Jenn]

When people started to point out the specific shortcomings
of her code she responded with "that was 10 years ago" which is not at
all useful. Also, not true since her main page, carrying a 2010 date, is
just as badly written as all the others.

hello..... have you ever heard of javascript? That date you refer to is
set by a javascript that applies the copyright date based on the current
year. I could leave that sample site up for 25 years and it would still
show the current year.

Several of us have acknowledged that her LOOK is pretty decent, but no
one here is going to praise the HTML code she's using to produce it as
it fails from the very first line.

Well... you really make me want to give a rip ... LOL

The more she posts the clearer it becomes that she's only ever used a
single browser (IE) to view her sites, that she believes that 'good
enough' is the same as 'pride in one's work', and that any time anyone
points out her errors her response is going to be "I got paid LOL".

wrong ...

She keeps repeating that she'd making money doing this, which is not
relevant; she's gone so far as to say outright that if you aren't making
money you don't count, which I find odd from someone who claims to be a
Xian, not to mention her 'black-eye' comment which, of course, puts her
in direct opposition to the teachings of the religious figure she claims
to follow.

Would you like to have a discussion of what it means to be a Christan and
the false idea that one has to be a wimpy weak and frail submissive step on
me any time you want type of human being? You wouldn't win that that debate.

I haven't kill-filed her as a troll yet, but I am starting to suspect
that she is a troll and is not here for any purpose but to cause strife
and discord.

yahooo .... I won't have to listen to your whinning anymore.

 

[Jenn]

I bet he doesn't walk into a girl scout camp-out and piss on the
camp-fire, as you seem to have done.

Excuse me ... I grew up and was a girl scout for 12 yrs and went camping
many times and have never done such a thing and never would even consider
doing it. You have a rather foul mind.

We are professionals here. Well, a lot of us are anyway. You waltz in and
state flat-out that the tools we have been using to very good effect for
years are so much mumbo-jumbo that you, preciously, don't need to take any
notice of. Are you surprised that someone takes a poke at you?

Pardon me again ... but you mentioned no tools but validators, and I see no
need for them, and your response to me was to shove it down my throat
verbally. Now, THAT's going to make me want to accept your tools.. isn't
it?

As an example, that site you coded five years ago using last millennium
code and flyspeck sized fonts. Say your client suddenly goes a bit blind
and asks you to make the font a little larger. What do you do? Wade
through thousands of lines of code looking for every single deprecated
font element to change the size. What would any one of us do? Change one
single line of code in our CSS file.

yes... that's what I did 5 to 10 yrs ago before I knew such a thing as CSS
existed... today I would consult the style sheet.

Your customer gives you one of those big fat paychecks to have her font
size changed.

Fat paychecks? no ... payment for work done to their satisfaction...?
Yes......

Mine? It'd take me twelve seconds and I'd probably do it as a goodwill
gesture. Cost to me: 12 seconds. Cost to client: $0. Income to me: the big
fat paycheck for the next site she asks me to produce that she knows will
last for a goodly long time without any further "fixing".

Payment for me is also future work.

So with my web sites. I plug in the validator and it tells me what is
wrong with them (usually typos) that might cause problems for today's and
tomorrows browsers.

Your method of attempting to convince me to use validators only convinces me
that only jerks use them.

 

[Jenn]

Did I not tell you four days ago that this is exactly what would happen
if you pressed the issue? Didn't I? Now, will you at least /try/ to
listen and learn, if you're going to participate here and elsewhere in
USENET?

Oh .. gee ... I wouldn't listen to most of you guys if you paid me to do it.
I'm not that hard up for advice. I'd rather listen to dorayme because
he/she (not sure) talks to me as a human being.

I mean, you are thicker than a dadgum brick, but just TRY to
listen, and learn. This is a technical newsgroup, and by nature technical
people who frequent technical newsgroups are concerned with technical
things, like html markup. You want nice, cuddly people to hold your hand
and tell you how great your sites are? Call your clients.

And you have no skill at design, you're boring, and have no people skills to
speak of. How do you manage to get any work at all with those personality
issues?

 

[Jenn]

Not if it did not work for nearly 40% of the visitors, and a #$^% to
maintain--I'll pass. I'll agree on the style, believe it or not that was
the most I could get her away from the purple. Not Victoria Secrets but
her clientele is more matured and settled...

Hey ... I'd say I qualify to judge whether or not a site would appeal to
women or not.

 

[Beauregard T. Shagnasty]

hello..... have you ever heard of javascript? That date you refer
to is set by a javascript that applies the copyright date based on
the current year. I could leave that sample site up for 25 years and
it would still show the current year.

I believe Lewis is referring to your site http://pqlr.org/
Your copyright year does not display at all for those with JavaScript
disabled. "Copyright ©" which looks silly.

However, the page's headers contradict your claim that "it's ok to have
old code because it is ... old."

Last-Modified: Wed, 06 Jan 2010 02:46:27 GMT

Your copyright notice should actually read: Copyright © 1995-2010
(or whatever the appropriate beginning year is).

 

[Jenn]

You ignored my comments about your Elmer's BBQ site. It appears to be an
active one, as it is the first hit at Google when searching for: elmers
bbq.
http://elmersbbq.net/zencart/ <-- order food online

no.. I didn't ignore you. I've been busy and haven't had time to look at
it.

Click on any food item -- for example, "Texas Toast."
The result will be:

1054 Unknown column 'p.products_id' in 'on clause'

Some food links work.. and some aren't, which is odd because the last time I
checked everything was working fine.

It's the same for every food item. I wonder if Elmer knows why nobody is
ordering lunch via the WWW.

Obligatory: LOL

In a wide window, that checkerboard background is eye-numbing. You
should reduce the contrast quite a lot.

Gee I could fix that... couldn't I? The client doesn't use the shopping
cart for anything but displaying their food items. I'll have to log in and
see whats up. I don't monitor the site, unless the client lets me know
something is wrong.. it won't get fixed. I'll put it on my TO DO list if I
can get to it this weekend sometime.

Thanks for the heads up!

 

[Jenn]

There is also in that checkerboard an PHP error:

Fatal error: Call to a member function Execute() on a non-object in
/home/itbebad/public_html/zencart/includes/functions/sessions.php on line
72

Very bad form to not trap errors to a log for diagnostics, allowing the
default PHP error handler disclose the internal working of your
server-side script is a bad security risk. There is more to web design
that appearance. So when Elmer's site get hacked is it a LOL?

I don't code PHP... the cart is a PHP script that was installed separately
that allows it to be edited for site mirroring. I can only edit the PHP as
far as their help files instruct.

 

[Jenn]

I believe Lewis is referring to your site http://pqlr.org/
Your copyright year does not display at all for those with JavaScript
disabled. "Copyright ©" which looks silly.

However, the page's headers contradict your claim that "it's ok to have
old code because it is ... old."

yes.. I created that site quite a few years ago and do an update
occasionally of a link or two...

Last-Modified: Wed, 06 Jan 2010 02:46:27 GMT

Your copyright notice should actually read: Copyright © 1995-2010
(or whatever the appropriate beginning year is).

....that site uses the same copyright script that automatically displays the
current year... and how I have it displayed is just fine.

 

[Jenn]

Actually that was rather a strange remark from rf. If you constrain a
box's width (but not its height) it usually contains its text perfectly
well.

You will only get overflow if the font is so big and the box so narrow
that the longest word doesn't fit.

Even with the most fluid of designs, width is always constrained,
because you can't set the size of the user's viewport in ems. He sets it
himself, in pixels.

If you do set widths on things in ems, you'll still cause horizontal
scrolling, it's just the user will have to scroll to see the right edges
of boxes rather than just to see the text in them, which doesn't really
help.

Yes, people should be nice-- or they're just going to put her off
validating anyway.

.... thanks for that nicely written post, Ben.... I agree with what you say
about constraining a box's width vs. it's height.

 

[Jenn]

Quoted for truth. Someone who acts as if industry-wide best practices
are a joke has no business claiming to be a professional.

People who act like God's gift to the html world (or anything for that
matter) are probably compensating for their lack of skill that they wish
they had.

 

[Jenn]

G'day. Not really true, my newsreader gets everything toot sweet.
The point of my word "earlier" was not merely that it was
earlier. I thought the one that went "I see Jenn's problem not so
much as being with the use of tables but in the fanatical
illusion that "boxes that must contain their text". And we all
know that constrained boxes will *never* contain text"... was
trenchant without being too unfriendly.

As for how to know what the limits should be, it helps to be able
to tell the temperature and know the boiling point of human blood
at a distance...

It is not hard to see why Jenn might have infuriated and puzzled.
But she has not done anything to deserve quite so many people
putting in the boot and making such an all out attack on her urls
which it must have taken some courage to give out here in the
first place.

Here is a woman who has brought up children, taught herself and
made a sufficient income to finance her responsibilities in the
best way she knew. I get a mighty uncomfortable feeling seeing
such a person having to take such a level of personal remarks. I
assess much of the talk by her as a product of being a basically
cheery and happy soul with some nervousness and, well, to be
frank, a lack of background in some of the very well rehearsed
things that are a staple around here. You cannot expect a person
like this to have no self respect and not defend so much of what
looks like an interesting active life that has been quite
productive.

She is from Oklahoma, for God's sake, who knows what Oklahomans
quite mean when they say things? Best to err on the side of
caution ...


It was not really a kicking, the biting was nervous show and not
a final done deal, it was more unconscious and querying. This is
going to take some time. Here was a suitable case for saving her
HTML/CSS soul and we risk losing her.

I blame you all for possibly blowing the last chance to revive
the fortunes of alt.html. <g>

I very much appreciate this post from you, dorayme... thank you!

 

[Beauregard T. Shagnasty]

And you have no skill at design,

"Design" is not all about "pretty."

Designing a good web site also includes accessibility, usability,
cross-browser compatibility and use, and much, much more.

You could begin by using a proper DOCTYPE on your pages.
http://www.w3.org/QA/2002/04/valid-dtd-list.html

As long as you continue to slag off professionals who (initially) gave
and tried to give you good advice in good faith, you will continue to be
treated in the manner you are becoming accustomed to here.

 

[Jenn]

"Design" is not all about "pretty."

Designing a good web site also includes accessibility, usability,
cross-browser compatibility and use, and much, much more.

I'm well aquainted with good design and all the other little aspects of it.

You could begin by using a proper DOCTYPE on your pages.
http://www.w3.org/QA/2002/04/valid-dtd-list.html

As long as you continue to slag off professionals who (initially) gave
and tried to give you good advice in good faith, you will continue to be
treated in the manner you are becoming accustomed to here.

What we have here is a failure to communicate ... I have no interest is
being group slapped by people who think they are the best and brightest in
the field when one look at their sites prove they have no idea what a good
design would be if it bit them directly on their posterior.

I will, however, enjoy interacting with dorayme and, I think it was Ben, who
has also been very nice thus far.

 

[Beauregard T. Shagnasty]

I'm well aquainted with good design and all the other little aspects
of it.

No, you aren't, and you continually prove it - including with that
sentence.

What we have here is a failure to communicate ... I have no interest
is being group slapped by people

It didn't start that way. It only denigrated into 'slapping' when you
slapped first by publicly stating that you had no intention of learning
anything beyond your "pretty" skills.

who think they are the best and brightest in the field when one look
at their sites prove they have no idea what a good design would be if
it bit them directly on their posterior.

Aha. Now there's a slap. My sites aren't good enough for you because
they are "too male." If I were to change the backgrounds to pink, and
add some flowers, you'd like them, right? The web is about *content*
and you aren't going to sell any more barbeque because the site has
flowers around the edges.

I will, however, enjoy interacting with dorayme and, I think it was
Ben, who has also been very nice thus far.

Kissee kissee...

 

[Jenn]

No, you aren't, and you continually prove it - including with that
sentence.

You are welcome to believe as you wish even if you are wrong.

It didn't start that way. It only denigrated into 'slapping' when you
slapped first by publicly stating that you had no intention of learning
anything beyond your "pretty" skills.

Right ... so you believe it's ok to denigrate ladies and cyber slap them if
they disagree with you or others here on this group?
How often do you slap the ladies verbally in real life? I bet you get far
with that approach.

Aha. Now there's a slap. My sites aren't good enough for you because
they are "too male." If I were to change the backgrounds to pink, and
add some flowers, you'd like them, right? The web is about *content*
and you aren't going to sell any more barbeque because the site has
flowers around the edges.

That's not what I said ... Your site is obviously designed by a man, and my
comment was not a slap. I could help you, but you only seem to believe I am
in need of being taught. Your loss.

Kissee kissee...

You can catch more flies with honey ... as the saying goes. I don't need to
have your approval, and would do just fine now without learning anything new
here at all from you or any of the other bullies. You'd do well to learn
some manners and communication skills.