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Ken of Kentropolis
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RE: Nice show/hide script - 2/10/2006 11:40:15
Here it is:
Renders properly in IE, not in FF ...
http://www.kentropolis.com/common/tabletest.htm
Code:
quote:
<table>
<tr>
<td valign="baseline" width="42">
<img src="http://kentropolis.com/common/_themes/blends/blebul1a.gif" width="15" height="15" hspace="13" alt="bullet"></td>
<td valign="top" width="100%"><font face="Trebuchet MS, Arial, Helvetica"><b>This is text to be aligned properly with the image to left.</b></font>
</td>
</tr>
</table>
So is valign="baseline" non-standard-compliant?
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Tailslide
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RE: Nice show/hide script - 2/10/2006 11:59:14
errmm - it looks exactly the same to me in FF and IE6...
valign="baseline" sounds reasonable enough to me - not one I use in XHTML but far as I know it's fine in HTML 4.01.
The thing with standard compliancy is that it depends which standard you're talking about - HTML 4.01 transitional, strict; XHTML transitional, strict etc etc. Without a DOCTYPE browsers will assume the "lowest common denominator" of HTML and present what you've coded (hopefully) according to that standard. There's a lot of markup that's no longer valid in XHTML strict but it's still valid in HTML 4.
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d a v e
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RE: Nice show/hide script - 2/10/2006 12:01:47
the text is lower down in firefox. but if you use css like my previous post... :)
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Ken of Kentropolis
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RE: Nice show/hide script - 2/10/2006 16:59:29
quote:
ORIGINAL: d a v e
the text is lower down in firefox. but if you use css like my previous post... :)
But my question is why?
Again, I don'rt care about all these so-called standards. Is it COMMON (standard in real life) or not, and if so, why is it misaligned in FF?
Is it another quirk of FF, or is it an uncommon tag attribute I should consider avoiding?
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Tailslide
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RE: Nice show/hide script - 2/10/2006 17:41:34
Ok well what you've got here isn't a case of a Firefox quirk - it's Firefox following W3C standards and IE doing something different.
Here's my test.
Test 1 : As per your link. This shows both browsers adding their respective margins to the top of the body element. IE adds 3px and FF adds 1px. Here's the list: http://www.w3schools.com/css/css_margin.asp
Test 2 : If you set the margins and padding of the body element to 0 then they both behave the same
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Ken of Kentropolis
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RE: Nice show/hide script - 2/10/2006 18:47:33
quote:
ORIGINAL: Tailslide
Test 2 : If you set the margins and padding of the body element to 0 then they both behave the same
Actually, it's less noticable, but still rendered differently. And the example I gave of raw HTML wasn't anywhere near as noticable as some I've seen.
So I guess what you are saying is that the margin defaults for rendering are different for the two browsers?
--------------------------------
Side Note / Confession:
You see folks, I never graduated to really using CSS, although I've used it on rare occasion. I'm a quick and dirty "modify theme" kinda guy (not even using the CSS option when publishing) and for every project I've ever done so far, that's been more than enough. But CSS is really cool and very tempting to my recessive -- but still present -- geek gene.
So if I have the time and/or need to go that far from WYSIWYG and tweaking snippets of code to really learning the stuff -- like for the more and more PHP-driven projects I'm working on -- I'll be asking a lot of questions. I'm just happy there are serious web developers here who I can talk to about FrontPage. Out where I am, I'm the big (and almost only) fish in the small pond of FP users and have no one more experienced to go to for help.
The rest of my colleagues only tell me "It must be a FrontPage issue; don't use it" no matter what the problem is I show them. That's why I was kinda caught off-guard by what seemed like anti-MS sentiment here in these forums.
But I do appreciate where you guys are coming from. Thanks for the feedback.
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Ken of Kentropolis
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RE: Nice show/hide script - 2/10/2006 18:52:31
quote:
ORIGINAL: d a v e
using images for bullets is simple
http://members.tiscali.fi/dave_pirjo/test-area/css_stuff/lists.htm (works in firefox too ;)
Very cool ... I figured there might be a CSS method, but wondered if there was an easier way without coding, or by using XHTML or something. If it's an issue on a project I can't get around otherwise, I'll use it. Thanks.
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Tailslide
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RE: Nice show/hide script - 2/11/2006 3:55:19
CSS is a pain to start off with but it honestly does get easier and the cleanliness of the markup that's left appeals to my girl-geek mind. You will run into problems with certain browsers - mostly you can tweak the code and or avoid the issues that cause the problems. I find myself more bothered by the stuff I'd like to do but am unable to due to poor browser support (which is why I get cross about IE7 when it's rumoured that certain CSS bits won't be supported even now).
I have to say that I'm not personally anti-MS outright but I think more competition would be healthier especially in the OS world (please let apple release the OSX to the pc world!) and would act as a spur to innovation and make our jobs easier.
I'm not against FP either apart from FP widgets failing to validate (I'm big on validation). I've never quite "got" professionals using WYSIWYG because I don't find it that time-consuming hand coding plus you always seem to need to double check what the software has done with your code. It ironically seems like it ends up being more work to me. I guess you get used to the way you work - whatever that is.
There's a fair old mix on this board - FP users of all levels, a few hand-coders, a few dreamweaver-types, some serious DB geeks, Standards fans and those who think standards are a waste of time. You'll get all shades of opinions.
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d a v e
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RE: Nice show/hide script - 2/11/2006 8:15:19
i thought internet Explorer is the standard? ;)
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Ken of Kentropolis
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RE: Nice show/hide script - 2/11/2006 11:57:45
quote:
ORIGINAL: womble
I'd agree with Tail. I don't think any of us are anti-M$ for the hell of it (well, a few maybe  ), but because their lack of interest in standards to date makes life so difficult for those of us who are standards fans. In my experience you build a site, then spend 30% of the time you're cross browser checking tweaking for other browswers, and 70% trying to get IE to behave. If it weren't for standards we'd potentially have to design a differently tweaked version for each browser. Now that really would be time consuming.
You see, I feel the same way about other browsers. And the fact that this whole thread is about making something that works with no problem in IE work on what you call "good" browsers is my point.
I know there's a war over following certain standards. But that's not my battle to fight -- I'm not arguing what is best or what is right. What "should be" and what Microsoft "should" do isn't as important to me as what "is" and what the vastly dominant browser "does". Please don't take offense at what you may think is a rediculous position.
But let me explain MY frustration. Instead of tweaking AFTER meeting various standards, I design for the obvious browser FIRST, then tweak it for the others. But I keep my design simple enough and avoid nested tables, certain background image parametes that don't work in Netscape, and add code for things like embedding so it works across the board, whatever. I strive for reasonable effort for maximum return on time invested.
But for me, designing cross-browser mean's "dummying down" my sites so they work on non-IE clients. It used to be that Netscape Navigator allowed more codes and script than IE (the first 2-3 versions), and then IE has been FAR, FAR, at the forefront ever since, IN THIS RESPECT.
I don't know about your own experiences, but I rarely find something that does not work in IE; there are books full of stuff that various other browsers don't support.
There are so many features I could incorporate if only the less used-browser would catch up a little faster and allow / properly render the code, instead of making me sludge through extra scripts and code every time I want to create an equivalent effect in a particular standard.
So while most of you guys are spending all that time strerching a "standard" to work on the dominant browser for 85-95% of your audience, I am annoyed spending all that time being held back and tweeking for the 5-15% of my audience.
So I don't mean this in a mean-spirited way, but I can't really feel sorry for you in your battle with IE.
BTW, I'm trying to not go off-topic, but I feeel like I've dragged it out too long. If you want to continue in this direction, I'd love to discuss it more. I actually BELIEVE in standards, but look at them very differently. Maybe a moderator can split the thread?
< Message edited by Ken of Kentropolis -- 2/11/2006 13:57:48 >
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Tailslide
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RE: Nice show/hide script - 2/11/2006 13:48:24
The thing is that IE doesn't do a lot of the stuff that the other "good" browsers do - there's a whole list of things that you either just can't do at all or have to hack around to get working in IE. It's really frustrating - there's so many things I'd love to include on a site but there's just no point as IE won't see it - and I'm not in favour of feeding IE an inferior site just because it's an inferior browser - I like all my sites to look the same (roughly speaking) on all browsers so I won't do the clever stuff for the smart browsers.
The reason it's better to code for Firefox then fix for IE is because IE is much more forgiving of coding errors - therefore it makes sense to code to the stricter standard and tweak for any IE bugs. If you code for IE first then the range of things to fix is just way too wide. Trust me when I say that it's much much much easier to do it the other way around - otherwise I wouldn't do it that way!
Here's a good article on IE: http://www.howtocreate.co.uk/wrongWithIE/
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Ken of Kentropolis
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RE: Nice show/hide script - 2/11/2006 14:06:35
Tailslide:
Very good points. I can see why it would make sense from that perspective to code standards used by the other browsers first.
And I'm not familiar with code that doesn't render in IE becaue it IS so forgiving like you said. But that's my blind spot because I've designed with FrontPage (and Notepad) predominantly since 1999, before that with Netscape Gold.
But it's still easier for me because I'm still at the point I don't do intense "high-end" web sites. A lot of it tends to be more unfriendly for text-only accessibility, and I focus on simplicity. It's partly laziness to code by hand and learn whole languages, but convenient for clarity. Like I said, I rarely have cross-browser issues or text-only difficulties, and often have no changes to make after testing.
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spitfire
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RE: Nice show/hide script - 2/11/2006 14:30:59
Ken
If I may say so, I think you have an imprecise understanding of the worth of coding standards and website usability.
If Microsoft offerings were the be all and end all of all things computing, why are there so many alternative applications and browsers? IE has benefitted from cute marketing by MS. Apple once had a manufacturing plant in Scotland (UK) and gave Apple computers to every Scottish school, in an effort to win the hearts and minds of the pupils and make them Apple users for the rest of their natural lives. But it didn't work because Apples/MACs are more expensive to buy and own than PCs.
So why was MS marketing successful? I hear you exclaim.
Two thoughts: gullibility and "I didn't know there were any alternatives". Those who now know there are alternatives and are open-minded enough to try them, have realised they can be cheaper, easier to understand, more stable, whatever. Then there are the gullible.
I am considered gullible because my default browser of choice is IE. My detractors, however, hardly ever ask W.H.Y? Simple, not because I don't know that I can turn it off, or how to turn it off, but I have to use it because I develop and assess sites for people who have a physical or visual problem that means they have to surf the net in a "different" way. They often need specialised software that only works in IE (at the moment). Regrettably the screen-reader emulators out there are just that - emulators - a fuzzy idea of how screen-readers work and are used. I am also working as an insignificant member of a great team producing magnification and screen-reading software. Our offerings work like a dream in Firefox, Opera, Netscape, Safari and Camino. But you wouldn't believe the problems we have with IE6 and then we will have to contend with IE7. It is getting to the point were we will put up "best used in anything other than IE". Our software will cost about £80 against around £800 for the current IE-only offerings.
So, ask yourself, if you need a piece of applications software (never mind what it is for), would you go for something that costs £80 and offers you a choice of free browsers, or would you go for the £800 one that may only work on IE but IE is "free" anyway isn't it?
I am talking merely as an applications developer here, but I would thank you not to shout down all things to do with accessibility. Who knows advancing years may mean that you will need a bit of assistance to surf the net, or buy online, no matter how physically fit you are now, or how acute your eyesight may be, at this stage in your life. If that happens, I fervently hope you will have a browser choice. If you choose IE let's hope that IE-only developers will have found out how to let you change your text size easily - at the very least.
Edit: missed Ken's edit above - nice script you've found there Tailslide
< Message edited by spitfire -- 2/11/2006 15:02:05 >
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Ken of Kentropolis
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RE: Nice show/hide script - 2/11/2006 15:44:31
Why the crusade? Again, I'm not agruing any of this, and don't even disagree. It's just all entirely beside the point.
IE can suck all it wants, and W3C can make all the standards it wants. It really doesn't matter, except to some people in the industry. The average person doesn't care, and we need to accept this and move on.
It still makes sense to center web development process around the dominant browser. You're not building sites for other geeks. You can't keep pretending that standards that the dominat player ignores is really "the" standard, even if it's something to be striven for in principle. You're building the web for the general population, and for the most part that means IE. You don't have to like it, you don't have to think it's fair.
But you have to deal with it. Use what works in the real world or keep whining about how it should be.
And as far as accessibility, I don't know where you are going with that. Didn't I make my pro-accessibility stance clear? Microsoft in general is at the forefront of accessibility, even if they do it their own way. And the existence of a free market has determined that surfing be accessible and that will never change if you understand economics. It will only get better, no matter what -- a dark future for the web may as well be a novel about the apocoplypse -- it's fiction. People with web sites want EVERYONE's money, and if developers and browsers don't provide easy access and process, another means will present itself immediately.
< Message edited by Ken of Kentropolis -- 2/11/2006 16:45:34 >
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d a v e
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RE: Nice show/hide script - 2/11/2006 15:47:17
don't forget though that the costs of all the extra hassle coding for IE is passed on to the average users/client: if IE was more standards compliant then it would take less time and be cheaper to develop web sites
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dpf
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RE: Nice show/hide script - 2/11/2006 16:45:03
quote:
because IE is much more forgiving of coding errors - quote:
if IE was more standards compliant then it would take less time and be cheaper to develop web sites
..dont those two statements cancel each other out?
its good to see a browser_debate_of_the_month going - i think its healthy.
lets revisit some history.. in the great netscape/IE browser wars of the mid - 90s, we had the intense competition everyone yearns for today. what did it produce? innovation as competition often does. standard compliance? Not. the companies kept releasing new tags to add functionality to make their product superior. in that climate, innovation runs ahead and standard-writing lags behind. some of the tags put forth by both companies were eventualy adopted by w3c; some werent.
It is true, as is often pointed out, that when netscape essentially expired, MS "stood still" and stopped issuing new IE versions (as well as new functionaliy), That essentially gave w3c time to catch up and maybe move ahead. but 95% of the market was using IE. along come browsers that strove, not to create new functionality but to adopt the standards and suddenly IE is garbage - im not so sure.
the observation that IE is "more forgiving" of non standard code is often throw out as a criticism but perhaps that misses the mark. doesnt that mean that, on the whole, IE is capable of delivering a better "web viewing experience" than standard compliant browsers? seems to me that a consumer with no interest in how web pages are made would be wiser to select IE than FF if IE delivers content better.
I get booed everytime i bring this up...but....I still believe it is absurd that screen readers for visually impaired are left to try to tease apart the flow of the information and that designers have to keep some tricks in the bag in order to ease the scren reader's task of getting the text in the correct order (and what does it cost to have designers become experts in screen readers?). it would be more straitforward to have a tag <screenreader> in which all the the text content is placed in its intended logical flow and let the screen reader "read" it directly. I dont want to hear about "oh that would make the file size grow and slow it down" - NOt - text adds little to the file size. besides, if you are a "good" web designers, you dont just do this:
<noframes> your browser doesnt support frames
or this
<noscript>your browser doesnt support script
you deliver an alternate content rather than leave visitors with those shortcomings with nothing to view. same would be true of <screenreader> content.
in fact, you could stack those tags together and deliver the text based content
anyhoo...... browsers such as FF wear the badge of honor proudly for accurately rendering standard compliant code but....... why would it be so bad if they were also more forgiving of imperfect code. what is the priority: the purity of the code or the accessibility of the information?
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d a v e
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RE: Nice show/hide script - 2/11/2006 16:55:11
no they don't cancel each other out. just because IE will forgive you something like missing off the px in the units picture dimensions or somesuch laziness it doesn't forgive its crap support of css standards. heck it doesn't even support full alpha transparency for png so you have to use hacks to get it to work, hopefully. its box model is knackered and varies according to version and doctype (isn't that useful for your average web page maker who can get away with a bit of sloppy code in forgiving IE but their layouts will vary widely between browsers and versions.
i can understand and easily live with the fact that IE is more forgiving (though it's not helpful for moving towards xhtml) but if it also supported more of the core standards (heck it doesn't even supprt acronym for heck's sake!!!) then it would be easier for all concerned.
i can see where you're coming from on the screen reader thing but that's another debate ;)
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dpf
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RE: Nice show/hide script - 2/11/2006 17:24:36
quote:
but that's another debate ;) ..for another day...lol
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RE: Nice show/hide script - 2/11/2006 17:24:37
quote:
but that's another debate ;) ..for another day...lol
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spitfire
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RE: Nice show/hide script - 2/11/2006 17:48:26
dpf
You make some excellent points there and almost turned me for a moment. A <screenreader> tag is a very good idea - sort of akin to the <aural> tags already in CSS. But to date there are no browsers, addon products or screenreaders that take advantage of these features (only that I am aware of, of course). If MS could produce a set of rules for a <screenreader> tag that screen-reader manufacturers could actually buy into and code towards, that would be great. But how far into the future would that be? How long has IE7 been in the making? How long will screenreaders manufacturers need to make the change and would it mean a change of mindset in most web developers? Dunno.
You ask "what does it cost to have designers become experts in screen readers?". In the US you would probably have to become expert at least in JAWS - cost $1,495 AND Window-Eyes at just over $1,000. Now add the cost of the developers time. For realism the software should be installed, the manual read and all the options understood and set up, with the developer's eyes closed and the mouse totally out of reach. Then the developer has to learn how to listen to and move around websites. Goodness knows how many developers would go through all that. But that's another debate lol,lol,lol.
I am often slated on fora for arguing for pragmatism against coding and other standards. I do believe in pragmatic coding, but that is because I understand the "standards" and know those that can be tossed aside without a deterioration in any visitor's experience of the site. I am sure you do too, but that may not be the case for some other readers of this thread.
d a v e
I thought IE did not support abbreviation - or have I got that wrong as well?
Anyhooooo, Tailslide, I still like your nice show/hide script.
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Ken of Kentropolis
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RE: Nice show/hide script - 2/11/2006 18:33:42
Whew! I was starting to think I was going to be an outcast here ... personal thanks to Spitfire who put the usefulness of what are currently called standards in a more useful perspective, and to dfp who was right on mark about competitive innovation driving technology, not the creation of standards by an external body. History clearly has spoken.
But these arguments almost smell like a socialism-capitalism debate, another thing that does not belong in IT prefessionalism. We must ask ourselves if it is our job to make our coding a political statement, or to just build a friggin site the best we can with what we have to work with.
*****************
As for being an expert in screen readers ... you people like to make life way more complicated than you have to. Don't take this the wrong way about becoming an expert on that software, but ...
WHY BOTHER?
Okay, I told you not to take it the wrong way. What I mean is that any software designed to make the web accessible to the (severely) visually impaired will do the same, simple thing:
Convert otherwise visible text to speech.
Sure it's a little more than that, such as organizational context and naviation, but that's just a short extension of this one point. And the way to do that is simple, and requires no special effort. Here are the key points:
(1) Use TEXT instead of pictures of text for most or all content. If you have images for links (buttons, icons), or headings substituted with graphics of text, always use TEXT ALTERNATE TAGS.
(2) If you use Javascript or anything not raw HTML for any navigation, including image maps, supply a TEXT NAVIGATION ALTERNATIVE somewhere on the page.
(3) KEEP TABLES SIMPLE. The simpler the table structure, the more obvious the content will be understood when read. In particular, avoid nested tables of text. The software is basically trying to "see" the page in a liner fashion, so you avoid too many twists and turns by following this point.
This may not follow the accessibility standard (here we go again), but it doesn't matter if it works. And as you know, FrontPage automatically does the text alternate tags for theme elements such as the page banners and navigation buttons generated by using navigation structure.
< Message edited by Ken of Kentropolis -- 2/11/2006 18:40:29 >
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Ken of Kentropolis
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RE: Nice show/hide script - 2/11/2006 19:57:05
I never bothered to upgrade from FP 2002 because most of the new features requires SharePoint Team Services or whatever ... I use a Linux box for my web server.
And it will please both camps to know I don't bother with several features in FrontPage that are not cross-broswer friendly, such as absolute positioning, and not that I ever use frames, but I believe in-line frames are also IE only.
But I look forward to the day when more and more code is readable by more browsers, so I can start doing cooler things without worry. But how this will or should happen is a political issue and not a technical one.
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gave it a (cursory) airing and put it back in the box. Not for me, sorry, but hey it's horses for courses. I do wonder how much it would cost to upgrade to a version of FP that codes to IE7 "standards" though.
