Re: Chelume - My Conlang website up.

On Thu, 8 Jan 2004, Caleb Hines wrote:

> > <noises of annoyment>: You've used a frame! Argh.
>
> Is that a problem? I've only used it to keep a single consistent
> navigational bar across the top. I thought all modern browsers supported
> frames?
Yes, of course they do (some to varying extents; Lynx, for instance, a
browser I sometimes have to use, simply says:
   FRAME: nav.html
   FRAME: main
and I have to make do with that. Unfortunately, though, frames ruin
things like links and bookmarks. For instance, if I wanted to link to noun
declension page, people who follow my link won't be able to find the rest
of your page, whereas if you link to my Proto-Germanic noun declension
page, it will be no different then if you linked to the front page. I
wouldn't complain about frames if your site could be used perfectly well
without them and they were just a courtesy, but if they're integral, they
ruin the experience.

> Darn non-IE browsers. Can't they all just get along?
For the most part, IE is the one that can't get along. And there are
browsers which by their very nature cannot support every single
(mis)feature IE adds to the standards. Indeed, their are browsers which by
their very nature cannot support every single aspect of the standards in
the same way, but if you're coding to standards, it is reasonable to
expect that you're trying to make your page accessible (which doesn't mean
you can't use the latest features (or even <img />, but rather you should
use them in a way that means if they still work if they're not there).

> I don't have access to any other browsers at home to test it with
> (except a reeeally old version of Netscape which I rarely use and
> whcih doesn't allow stylesheets at all and which chokes on most
> JavaScript). I could try testing the pages with the current version of
> Netscape at school in a couple of days, but I'm not sure how much it
> will help. Won't it either look good in one browser and bad in
> another, or vice-versa? I figured so many people use IE I might as
> well cater to the vast majority.
Well... If you want to do it Properly, Internet Explorer will probably get
in your way, yes. Alternatively, you can do steer clear of most of the
more complicated CSS and it could look okay in both.

> I'll bet when you get to the Alphebet page, you get nothing but the XML
> source code. If so, I can't help you there, because I'm keeping the XML no
> matter what! ;P
Well, if you're going to use XML, you'd better do it properly and get your
server to *say* you're using XML. I really don't see what's wrong with
preprocessing it and uploading the generated file though, if it's going to
increase your audience.

> > For maximum brilliance, you should aschew fixed
> > measurements like pixels, and especially measurements
> > like points, centimetres etc...
> >
> > ...Instead, you should use relative measurements such
> > as 'small', percentages or things like em and ex which
> > are relative to the fontsize.
>
> I thought I tried to use percentages most of the place. Looking back at the
> style sheet, I find that most of the places where I use pixels are small
> things like padding and border (for example, a one pixel border around
> images). These kind of things would seem to be better left to pixels?
Oh yeah. My main concern was with your p which I saw and didn't like :)
You probably should say 2em rather than a percentage, it makes more sense
from a typographer's point of view, but that's just me...

> But I did go back and change most (all but two) of them to
> percentages. One thing I did test is resetting my screen to its lowest
> resolution (to the detriment of my desktop-icon sorting scheme!). The
> page still loked good in IE at low resolution.
You do realise, though, that windows don't actually *have* to be
maximised? You can just resize them at will (which means no need to change
resolution to the detriment of your desktop-icon sorting scheme).  It
seems this is a common confusion, but on my 1024x768 screen, most windows
are about as wide as they would be on an 800x600 screen, mostly because
there are some evil webdesigners out there who still have this weird idea
that' it's okay to say: make this this wide and ABSOLUTELY NO SMALLER!!!
and choose the width base on 800x600 screens. I personally find long lines
of text difficult to read.

> > Sorry to be picky, but I prefer people to
> > learn things the right way is all.
>
> Quite alright. These stylistic/conventional things are the stuff they don't
> each us in class. Like I remember my teacher assuring us that nothing was
> wrong with using frames.
Well, as I said, if you do your frames in such a way that you can still
use the site fully without them, then yes, they're fine. They should be
there to help your viewers, not to make your job easier (which things like
PHP are better suited for; you get more radical changes easily enough).

> > There doesn't seem to be all that much there, the 'Alphabet',
> > 'Grammar' and 'Vocabulary' in the top frame aren't linked.
> > I presume this is accidental?
>
> ?!?
> Yes they are linked... Perhaps the problem is that I purposely put the
> anchor tags around the td's instead of just the text, which, in IE at
> least, allows you to use the entire table cell as a link. Nonetheless, I
> have directly linked the text now, instead of the cells. -sigh- And I
> thought linking table cells was a neat trick.
Ah, well, the Proper way to do that, and I've done a similar on my
webpage, is by using 'display: block'. Unfortunately, it doesn't work in
everyone's favorite browser, IE, as far as I know.

One day, you'll be able to say <td href="url">...</td> and have it work
nicely. Unfortunately, IE will probably take its jolly time in supporting
XHTML 2.0 even though its a trillion times better than anything else (or
what I know of it at least). The biggest problem is is though XHTML 1.x
were continuations of HTML, XHTML 2 isn't.

--
Tristan