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Saving Bandwidth With Standards-Compliant Code

Posted by timothy on from the look-feel-do dept.

RadioheadKid writes "DevEdge has an interview with ESPN associate art director Mike Davidson. In the interview Davison talks about the decision to switch to a standards-based, non-table layout. The interview touches on the process he went through to make that decision and the rewards in both bandwidth savings and browser compatibility. An interesting read for those who have not switched to a standards-based, non-table layout. (hint, hint)"

6 of 76 comments (clear)

  1. Oh the irony! by Andy_R · · Score: 4, Informative

    I tried to read the article, and guess what I saw...

    "Please Upgrade Your Browser

    You are using a browser which does not support the minimal standards required to get the full experience of DevEdge website."

    --
    A pizza of radius z and thickness a has a volume of pi z z a
    1. Re:Oh the irony! by EnVisiCrypt · · Score: 4, Informative

      Although, it should be noted that the site will continue to work for you, just not the spectacular fashion in which it was designed. But if you're using a text-mode browser or Netscape 6, you probably don't care about things like layout.

      --


      *everything* is Orwellian to cats.
  2. Commentary on ESPN's site overhaul by qengho · · Score: 4, Informative

    As usual, CodeBitch has something interesting to say about standards in general and ESPN in particular.

  3. Want to save bandwidth... by Pentagon13 · · Score: 5, Informative

    After their latest homepage update I finally had enough. All my ESPN bookmarks now point to http://lite.espn.go.com. No Flash, no ads, no MS crap off to the right, just the content. You can always click on the big ESPN logo at the top to access the bloated homepage if you feel the need.

  4. Re:Netscape Navigator 4.x by brianmf · · Score: 4, Informative

    You could alse specify your style sheet link in a way that ns4 doesn't understand (I think there are a couple, but you lose the ability to provide a different style sheet for print media).

    I don't think you need to give up on media=print stylesheets just because you are trying to cater for NN4. NN4 wont do much with your print stylesheets but Moz and IE should use them fine.

    What I would do is to include the stylesheets in the usual way (with a <link> element) and then if you want to cater for NN4 have the first rule in that stylesheet as an @import rule that imports all the advanced css rules (that are thus hidden from NN4).

    I tend to avoid hacks (including the above one) at all costs because they increase the maintanence overhead, but if you are that way inclined, you should read the css-d Wiki. It has some good tips.

  5. Re:Standards by d-Orb · · Score: 4, Informative
    Having said that, CSS makes it difficult to do some things that tables can do easily (columnar layout), which is why many people still use very simple tables for basic layout, without going to the extremes of spacer gifs, multiply-nested tables, etc.

    I take offence to that :-) !! It is quite simple to do. For some examples, see Glish.com, or (shameless plug) a site I have mostly finished coding :-)