Visibone's HTML/CSS reference card is worth the $10. Nice four-page card that goes into a lot more detail on browser compatibility, CSS property values, how CSS relates with HTML, and so forth, yet manages to fit all the CSS stuff in one page.
(They also make a good JavaScript card from which I learned most of my JavaScript, as well as those nifty color charts.)
Microsoft does not have a history of using software patents to block rivals.
Microsoft did use its patents on the Active Streaming Format to block an open-source implementation. VirtualDub once supported editing ASF files but the author was forced to remove it. Granted this wasn't a patent Microsoft purchased, and in many cases Microsoft is using things other than patents to block rivals.
Regardless of how the search engine gets the link, however, the indexing software SHOULD drop anything after the '?' character anyway (to avoid indexing the same cgi repeatedly with different arguments).
Unfortunately there are many sites containing large numbers of articles that use URLs that contain article ID numbers in the query string to link to stories, and those would stop getting indexed. Slashdot itself is one of them. Example URL for this story:
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=01/11/26/154324 5 (ignore the space above)
Yes it's a really dumb design but unfortunately nobody takes URLs into consideration when designing web sites. Hasn't anyone heard of PATH_INFO? Hack article.pl to use it and make your URLs look something like this, for example:
http://slashdot.org/article.pl/2001-11-26/1543245 (PATH_INFO would be "/2001-11-26/1543245", parse as needed)
You could even use QUERY_STRINGS in conjunction for things like "mode=nested".
I wrote those comments late last night. I should have not mentioned CSS as something to be excluded from my version of the KISS principle. Your first paragraph is dead-on.
KISS? Maintaining 8 different versions of HTML for each page of content is keeping it simple?
Let me make myself clear. Sticking with basic HTML elements that work on all browsers and using style sheets to pretty yourself up for the modern browsers is keeping it simple. That doesn't lend to eight different versions of anything.
Keeping web technology stuck at the level of 1996 forever is preferred?
Name one Internet-related technology (other than HTTP/1.1 and CSS) that has been developed after 1996 that has, on the whole, been beneficial to people? I can think of a few legitimate uses for JavaScript, but the fact that so many web sites require it to function cancels that out.
As soon as people stop seeing NS and IE as web browsers and start seeing them as web
application platforms, DHTML and CSS stop being the enemy and start to get real problems
solved. There is more to DHTML than image rollovers.
Once again, I agree that JavaScript and DHTML have their legitimate uses, but their legimiate uses don't make the issues of privacy, security, bloat, and compatibility with all web browsers (not just the bloated ones that support JavaScript) go away.
I find it ironic that your so hip in technology to use a PDA but want everything text based for your convenience as well.
In all seriousness though, show me the law, policy, or system requirement that says you have to have a Pentium III/Duron running a version-7 browser and not care about how fast/unannoying a site is in order to buy or use a palm-based computer.
as for the impaired, standardizing will only *IMPROVE* the ability to design interfaces that
user STANDARD data types and such. Only making it many times easier to use the
information you retrieve.
Only if that standard is XHTML 1.0, without JavaScript, DHTML, CSS, or anything else. The KISS principle (and by that I mean sticking with HTML) lends itself much better to usability by the blind. Your typical fancy web designer that uses JavaScript and CSS doesn't do it with attention to compatibility with anything except his own computer in mind. Some people call that ``tunnel vision''.
I would be interested to know where you got the statistic that 20% of users disable JavaScript. Statistics available from thecounter.com actually report similar results. If you know of another source of information that can back this up I would love to hear about it.
http://www.discover.com/nov_00/featinvisible.html
<RANT>Unfortunately the discover.com web site is implemented by idiots that don't know how to design a site that works without requiring J*v*Scr*pt to be turned on.</RANT> Fortunately, this ``deep link'' should work on most browsers.
An interface to allow a computer user to change the size of a rectangular area (window) on the computer display by providing for one or more specially marked regions along the edge of the rectangular area, typically a ``border'' that is a fixed number of pixels thick and surrounds the rectangular region but does not overlap it, detecting when the area is ``rolled over'' by a computer's mouse and one of the mouse buttons is subsequently pressed while the mouse pointer is in one of the specially marked regions, detecting when the computer's mouse is being subsequently moved as the mouse button is continuously held down (dragging) and continuously drawing rectangular borders on the screen to reflect the desired size of the window, detecting when the computer's mouse button is released, and re-drawing the contents of the rectangular region and window decorations once the desired window size is achieved. As the computer user moves the mouse as he is continuously holding down the mouse button, the computer dynamically changes, in the same direction and same number of pixels as each movement of the mouse, the position of the edge or edges closest to the specially marked region where the mouse pointer is initially located when the user initially holds down the button change the window's position; the other edges of the rectangular border stay fixed in their respective locations. If the user drags the computer's mouse on a specially marked region located near a corner of the rectangular area, typically at most a fixed number of pixels away from the corner, the computer changes the positions of both edges of the rectangular border that intersect said corner; if the user drags the computer's mouse on a specially marked region located somewhere else along the edge of the rectangular area, typically at least a fixed number of pixels away from the corner of the window, the computer only changes the position of that edge.
Well, I prefer AIM because the user interface is *so* much better. You don't have to keep clicking on all sorts of crap just to hold a conversation. The odd thing is that this has
nothing to do with the protocol. ICQ clients could use the AIM interface, but for some
reason every client I've seen takes after the horrable crappy original ICQ interface.
Some ICQ clients, including Mirabilis ICQ for Java and LICQ, have a chat mode (separate from passing a bunch of individual instant message units back and forth) where each user can see what the other is typing right away (or when the user press Enter, depending on what client they're using), and you can scroll back to previously said stuff. You have to issue a special type of instant-message known as a Chat Request (the user sees a special icon) and the user has to accept it.
Unfortunately not all ICQ clients support it. But all the good ones do, because I rely on it.:)
Combining the strengths of Intel and Linux, the name just screams innovation and vision. I'm sure you could come up with some weird obscure contrived deviration for it, too. I just realized it contains the word ``Lintel'' so I guess I could give credit to the ``Lintel'' guy.
not to mention an almost equal number killed by people under the influence of alcohol in auto accidents (I do realize, though, that not everyone in the world
drinks Miller Beer, so their resonsibility is somewhat lowered).
As if the beer companies were ever responsible for all those idiots making the choice to drink and drive in the first place. As for tobacco companies and cigarettes, that's a different story.
Moderate this down as redundant if you want, but perhaps this should serve as a wake-up call to other shoddy designers of web sites that fail to function if Java is disabled or not supported, JavaScript is disabled or not supported, or certain plugins are disabled or not installed (I'm not saying don't use those them). Some people turn JavaScript off because too many web sites have taken advantage of it to do nasty annoying things (banner popups, disabling the exit button, etc.); others turn Java off because it slows down their computer; same with plugins; others turn cookies off due to privacy concerns; someday more people are going to turn just about everything off of their web browsers out of privacy concerns and things like that. Someday this could really mean a loss of audience. Maybe that's not why IAM is suing Razorfish, but I wouldn't be surprised that such lackadesical attitudes towards browser compatibility if it were the subject of lawsuits someday if not now. --
The same thing will also never come true for my other wish, that of mtv bring back all of it's 80's content to be shown late nights when they dont have anything on and could actually score some ad cash from all of us 'kids' remebering our "big hair" phase.
It's bad enough that MTV hardly plays videos except for maybe during ``120 minutes'' (from what I hear). We don't need MTV playing music videos only during what radio industry critics refer to as ``ghetto'' hours.
This ``moderate this guy down'' stuff was my anger showing through more than anything else. I'll try to be less inflamatory here. This guy might have brought up a valid question but he's also slighting people just because they're not running the latest whizz-bang super-dooper applications. These are people behind all those keyboards, running all different kinds of operating systems, web browsers, etc., and the Web does not need to exhibit that kind of intelligence-insulting classism towards them. This kind of thinking slights the blind. This kind of thinking slights those who prefer speed over looks. A browser that's either missing certain feautres or is configured not to use them because I don't trust them is not broken by any definition of broken. Especially if those features (Java, JavaScript, Flash) are by no means essential to what people on Earth go to web sites for. Most people care about being able to get information from a web site. Most of that information is text. They don't care about being impressed by slow glitzy graphics. I know that some web sites are trying to make artistic statements, but if they're trying to make artistic statements and provide content, they need to keep text and graphics in mind, which any good web designer can do. So am I wrong for wanting speed and user-friendliness instead of slowness and sugary pretentious prettiness? Am I wrong for not trusting certain features in my web browser, especially if they slow it down or crash it (Java) or have had a long history of security holes (JavaScript)? --
This guy should have received a score of *minus* two. It is exactly his type of thinking that makes most web sites suck. Browser compatibility does not equate to removal of features (just get rid of the you-must-use-M$IE tunnel-vision and use them intelligently), and neither equates to ``dumbing down''. The best ways to dumb down your site are large images without alternate text, the use of JavaScript and Java to make your site not function at all unless you have those untrustworthy feature turned on, and corporate mandates from the top brass located somewhere on Mars on what the web site looks like or functions like. And how dare you call this guy ``conservative'' when 90% of the web is broken and he wants people to fix it? And don't call us ``web-handicapped'', troll. --
Okay I guess if you want to advertise on a large number of web sites that get 50000 hits/month or some small such number I guess that's one thing that agencies are good for. One way to solve the alternate-text problem I brought up is to have a setup where when the web server wants to insert an ad on a page, it issues a request to the third-party server to get the HTML for a banner (that the third-party server could pick) and then serves the banner to the user. Handling timeouts might be an issue, though. This at least solves the alternate-text problem. This would require a little extra programming, but web site maintainers don't have to worry about downloading ad fragments, etc. --
I know this is off the topic of patents, but it's on the topic of remote ad servers and why they're a bad idea.
Most of them involve the remote serving of images and click-through redirections; alternate text is usually left out.
Third party ad servers involve third parties which only serve to cause communication problems regarding important little details like what pages an ad needs to be shown on, etc.
I think this here is a strong case for web site owners to use software for serving ads that runs on their own web servers. This way, third parties aren't needed to track click-throughs and impressions. And a point of failure (manifesting itself as the third-party ad server) is removed.
I admit that I don't really understand the value of third-party ad servers, but I'm sure that this value can be achieved by other means, which probably involve the creation of standard protocols for repors and things like that. --
Not to mention the site uses frames and seems to have no alternate text at all.
Graphic-intensive web sites are bad enough, but without alternate text they are broken. Some people actually turn off graphics or use text-based browsers in the real world, you know. And did I mention the site uses frames and doesn't seem to have any real need to?
At least the site didn't require me to turn JavaScript on like some other poorly-designed web sites do. --
Slashdot Mirror
Visibone's HTML/CSS reference card is worth the $10. Nice four-page card that goes into a lot more detail on browser compatibility, CSS property values, how CSS relates with HTML, and so forth, yet manages to fit all the CSS stuff in one page.
(They also make a good JavaScript card from which I learned most of my JavaScript, as well as those nifty color charts.)
The Palestinian Authority did get an ISO 3166 country code and a top-level domain a couple years or so ago:
http://www.iana.org/reports/ps-report-22mar00.htm
Apparently they had palestine.int for a while. Link to .ps domain registration:
http://www.nic.ps/whois/index.php3
Microsoft did use its patents on the Active Streaming Format to block an open-source implementation. VirtualDub once supported editing ASF files but the author was forced to remove it. Granted this wasn't a patent Microsoft purchased, and in many cases Microsoft is using things other than patents to block rivals.
kilgore_47 wrote:
Unfortunately there are many sites containing large numbers of articles that use URLs that contain article ID numbers in the query string to link to stories, and those would stop getting indexed. Slashdot itself is one of them. Example URL for this story:
Yes it's a really dumb design but unfortunately nobody takes URLs into consideration when designing web sites. Hasn't anyone heard of PATH_INFO? Hack article.pl to use it and make your URLs look something like this, for example:
You could even use QUERY_STRINGS in conjunction for things like "mode=nested".
Radio industry news web site Radio Ink reported this morning that the banned song list was a hoax.
http://www.radioink.com/HeadlineEntry.asp?hid=6028 7&pt=Ink+Headlines /. puts a space in the text.
This link should still work even though
All you need is a couple of those cubicle divider walls, a couple postal shipping tubes, and some duct tape!
http://photos.webonastick.com/roof/
Try this in GNU Bash. Maybe on an unsuspecting friend. :)
PROMPT_COMMAND='_pwd=`echo $PWD|\
sed "s:/:\\\\\\\\:g;\
y:abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz:\
ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ:"`'
PS1='C:$_pwd> '
--
Darren Stuart Embry
http://rfc3098.x42.com/
--
Darren Stuart Embry
- ASF is patented, however.
- Microsoft did force the author of VirtualDub to abandon ASF support in its product.
There may be a copy of the file VirtualDub_source-v1.3c.zip out there somewhere, though.
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An interface to allow a computer user to change the size of a rectangular area (window) on the computer display by providing for one or more specially marked regions along the edge of the rectangular area, typically a ``border'' that is a fixed number of pixels thick and surrounds the rectangular region but does not overlap it, detecting when the area is ``rolled over'' by a computer's mouse and one of the mouse buttons is subsequently pressed while the mouse pointer is in one of the specially marked regions, detecting when the computer's mouse is being subsequently moved as the mouse button is continuously held down (dragging) and continuously drawing rectangular borders on the screen to reflect the desired size of the window, detecting when the computer's mouse button is released, and re-drawing the contents of the rectangular region and window decorations once the desired window size is achieved. As the computer user moves the mouse as he is continuously holding down the mouse button, the computer dynamically changes, in the same direction and same number of pixels as each movement of the mouse, the position of the edge or edges closest to the specially marked region where the mouse pointer is initially located when the user initially holds down the button change the window's position; the other edges of the rectangular border stay fixed in their respective locations. If the user drags the computer's mouse on a specially marked region located near a corner of the rectangular area, typically at most a fixed number of pixels away from the corner, the computer changes the positions of both edges of the rectangular border that intersect said corner; if the user drags the computer's mouse on a specially marked region located somewhere else along the edge of the rectangular area, typically at least a fixed number of pixels away from the corner of the window, the computer only changes the position of that edge.
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Moderate this down as redundant if you want, but perhaps this should serve as a wake-up call to other shoddy designers of web sites that fail to function if Java is disabled or not supported, JavaScript is disabled or not supported, or certain plugins are disabled or not installed (I'm not saying don't use those them). Some people turn JavaScript off because too many web sites have taken advantage of it to do nasty annoying things (banner popups, disabling the exit button, etc.); others turn Java off because it slows down their computer; same with plugins; others turn cookies off due to privacy concerns; someday more people are going to turn just about everything off of their web browsers out of privacy concerns and things like that. Someday this could really mean a loss of audience. Maybe that's not why IAM is suing Razorfish, but I wouldn't be surprised that such lackadesical attitudes towards browser compatibility if it were the subject of lawsuits someday if not now.
--
It's bad enough that MTV hardly plays videos except for maybe during ``120 minutes'' (from what I hear). We don't need MTV playing music videos only during what radio industry critics refer to as ``ghetto'' hours.
--
This ``moderate this guy down'' stuff was my anger showing through more than anything else. I'll try to be less inflamatory here. This guy might have brought up a valid question but he's also slighting people just because they're not running the latest whizz-bang super-dooper applications. These are people behind all those keyboards, running all different kinds of operating systems, web browsers, etc., and the Web does not need to exhibit that kind of intelligence-insulting classism towards them. This kind of thinking slights the blind. This kind of thinking slights those who prefer speed over looks. A browser that's either missing certain feautres or is configured not to use them because I don't trust them is not broken by any definition of broken. Especially if those features (Java, JavaScript, Flash) are by no means essential to what people on Earth go to web sites for. Most people care about being able to get information from a web site. Most of that information is text. They don't care about being impressed by slow glitzy graphics. I know that some web sites are trying to make artistic statements, but if they're trying to make artistic statements and provide content, they need to keep text and graphics in mind, which any good web designer can do. So am I wrong for wanting speed and user-friendliness instead of slowness and sugary pretentious prettiness? Am I wrong for not trusting certain features in my web browser, especially if they slow it down or crash it (Java) or have had a long history of security holes (JavaScript)?
--
This guy should have received a score of *minus* two. It is exactly his type of thinking that makes most web sites suck. Browser compatibility does not equate to removal of features (just get rid of the you-must-use-M$IE tunnel-vision and use them intelligently), and neither equates to ``dumbing down''. The best ways to dumb down your site are large images without alternate text, the use of JavaScript and Java to make your site not function at all unless you have those untrustworthy feature turned on, and corporate mandates from the top brass located somewhere on Mars on what the web site looks like or functions like. And how dare you call this guy ``conservative'' when 90% of the web is broken and he wants people to fix it? And don't call us ``web-handicapped'', troll.
--
Okay I guess if you want to advertise on a large number of web sites that get 50000 hits/month or some small such number I guess that's one thing that agencies are good for. One way to solve the alternate-text problem I brought up is to have a setup where when the web server wants to insert an ad on a page, it issues a request to the third-party server to get the HTML for a banner (that the third-party server could pick) and then serves the banner to the user. Handling timeouts might be an issue, though. This at least solves the alternate-text problem. This would require a little extra programming, but web site maintainers don't have to worry about downloading ad fragments, etc.
--
I think this here is a strong case for web site owners to use software for serving ads that runs on their own web servers. This way, third parties aren't needed to track click-throughs and impressions. And a point of failure (manifesting itself as the third-party ad server) is removed.
I admit that I don't really understand the value of third-party ad servers, but I'm sure that this value can be achieved by other means, which probably involve the creation of standard protocols for repors and things like that.
--
Not to mention the site uses frames and seems to have no alternate text at all.
Graphic-intensive web sites are bad enough, but without alternate text they are broken. Some people actually turn off graphics or use text-based browsers in the real world, you know. And did I mention the site uses frames and doesn't seem to have any real need to?
At least the site didn't require me to turn JavaScript on like some other poorly-designed web sites do.
--