I don't want to be using a browser that can't support the entertaining flash driven sites
I don't want to be using a browser, I'd rather have an intelligent agent to scour the web on my behalf and summarise what I need to know, offer me alternatives based on my criteria. That would return me a summary in my preferred format and allow me to flick through the personalised results.
Unlike you, I don't see the value of sitting infront of a monitor all evening clicking links like a semi-trained gopher, gawking at flickery tricks like a magpie -- Oh look a blinky text cursor -- . I'd rather go out and see a movie on a large screen, a nice restaurant and finishing it with an exquisite company of friends. Not watching geekaws on a 17 inch monitor.
Now with HTML correctly describing the structure of the content, I can spend more time with friends, and less looking at your blinky things. Because my agent will peruse your site, see nothing of value, and won't bother to record it (or add it to the trash filter of sites to avoid).
Yes, there will be other people like you not having a life, and want to look at your geegaw portfolio. I have a life, the web is just a tool, and at the moment a manually-intensive tool, and judging by your efforts it will remain that way.
Ahh. Sounds like a case of "broken-by-design". If a design breaks because of the introduction of a rectangular resource, then it was broken to begin with.
if e.g. real time communicaion between two visitors is wished you would have to call a cgi every few seconds or so
Or you could do what intelligent people do and stop reinventing the wheel, then use the multitude of instant messaging systems already available. Then they wouldn't be stuck on your site all the time if they wanted to talk to each other - that would definitely be an end user benefit.
javascript behaves differently from platform to platform. that makes development slow (read: expensive for the customer).
But javascript behaves consistently on the same platform, and thus documented as such. This documentation is available to you, and as a result, the javascript libraries you build will contain these reusable menus.
If you believe that javascript development is slowed, then your techniques are up the creek along with your business model, and you are effectively charging the client for your incompetance and lack of skills, rather than your demonstration of existing skills.
Why you lot (webdesigners) consistently insist on reinventing the wheel at each turn, and yet still only deliver triangular wheels (because its an improvement of one bump over the square wheel) -- this is beyond me, and seems to be about pure greed rather than doing a good quality job and being proud of it.
Except that no matter you do, no matter how phrase that, it will look like absolute crap on older browsers.
Looks fine in Lynx and Links. Perhaps its your dislike of text that's the problem? Browser support of CSS is not mandatory, browsers can elect whether to use it or not. Netscape 4 insists on doing it badly, that's their choice.
Have you actually _considered_ why people use older browsers. It doesn't take a genius to figure out that its not because they want cutting edge over-crufted websites. They want information. If your information cannot be presented without enforcing a brand, Netscape 4 makes an excellent website filter.
With a free choice, Netscape 4 is chosen by people who want the content without the bloat. By authoring in the style above, you are giving them exactly what they want.
People who tend to use Netscape 4 out of choice also have the intelligence to customise it for their specific requirements -- user defined style sheet -- why prevent that by forcing a typically "presentation-only" unreadable font?
You know that the site will look like crap on NS4
No, given good content and clean markup, the website is completely usable in Netscape 4. Leave the presentation to the browser-user -- they know better than you and me what fonts and what layout suits them.
WTF. You don't need the divs. You can assign CSS attributes to all elements.
You are welcomed to explain how you are going to float all the content to the right, allowing the navigation to fill up the space on the left without putting the content and navigation in its own containers and without overkilling on ids and classes.
Now, we code for compliance against NN4.x, NN6.x, IE5.x, IE6.x on Windoze, and IE5.x, NN4.x, NN6.x on MacOS 9.x, and IE5.x, NN6.x on MacOS X. (Incidentally, even though we don't do QA on Mozilla, the pages seem to work just fine.)
They should look fine when you realise that Netscape 6.x is based on the Mozilla code base.
I can produce a site that will display perfectly against every browser ever created, but I can't do that *and* have a reasonable site layout.
You can't, I can. You first need to unlearn the crap you've amassed so far. Most likely you have layout and presentation in your HTML, and that's why you always fail.
Authoring for the World Wide Web 101
Take just the content of one of your pages, and create a simple HTML document that correctly describes the structure of your content. Encapsulate that content within a div, and give it an id.
Now underneath, create another div for your navigation. Your navigation will tend to be a list of links.
Now create another div before the content div and stick your logo graphics in there.
Now you are done with the HTML and you have a page that displays in all html compliant browsers.
Now, and _only_ now can you insert your presentation, like this: Reference a CSS file in your document header. Now create a stylesheet that encapsulates the placement of your div's, style your fonts, colour with your crayons.
Simple when you approach the problem from the right direction.
Not too hard because you can detect that from the User Agent.
You are _relying_ on User Agent string -- then you deserve to get royally screwed. Nowhere, but nowhere is it documented that the Agent String needs to be accurate, its _optional_ and at the discretion of the browser.
The only reason people have started manipulating their User Agent string is because fuckwits like you can't do your job properly by making your content fully accessible in the first place.
Look how many pages assume that MSIE and NN4 are the only possible browsers on the planet. 2 browsers out of 1000 -- that's shocking and idiotic.
It's very hard to tell a company they need to upgrade their office suite when nothing has changed but the interface and the clip-arts.
And that's precisely why companies shouldn't be persuading others to upgrade.
Why not deliver innovative improvements instead - things that help solve real business problems, rather than an irritating "how-may-I-screw-up-your-suicide-note-today" talking paperclip.
Taking the example of email harvesting posioning, have you thought about something along the lines of the following:
I expect that you probably have a list of known honeypots, so why not _share_ spam relay tests? So if someone does a spam relay test on your honeypot - you'll probably have the entire contents of the email - send that to a few other honeypots, and duplicate being the sender through that open relay. So the email address has several open relay "notifications" -- but these are all honeypotted.
This poisons the list of open relays by increasing the number of honeypots.
(I'm assuming that deliberately running a honeypot is an effort to reduce the level of spam, so helping our poor spammer out may be beneficial).
Block the spammer's IP, and complain to his ISP. If the ISP takes no action or hops the spam to a new address, block a/24 (256 IPs) of the ISP regardless of which customers of the ISP is using them. If the ISP continues to ignore complains, expand the list. Rinse, Repeat.
This is what both spews (IANS) and Spamhaus (IWIWS) do. Its very effective and I'm strongly in favour of it. Especially when you consider that email is a priviledge and not a right, there is no guarantee that email will reach its intended destination.
It's hard to believe that anyone could be so stupid as to defend spamming.
It's hard to believe that anyone could be so stupid as to claim that "I don't wanna get stuff in my email that I didn't ask for" is a realistic way to participate on the internet.
It's hard to believe that you think people cannot decide for themselves what they're interested in.
Its called freedom of choice. Of course you don't understand it - it's not in a spammer's interest to conceed that people can make their own minds up over what they want in their inboxes.
Interesting (again in its most widest and incorrect sense) that all the examples you quote above are a result of _user_choice_ (They put the TV on, they buy a magazine, they open their browser and type in the magical URL http://www.slashdot.org). Now where exactly is the user choice _before_ receiving your crap?
*cricket's chirping in the background*
Get off your dead camel. The presence of an inbox does not give you the permission to dump your junk in it.
So when you're favorite TV program is interrupted by commercials, that has no cost to you?
Of course not, as a UK survey and study clearly shows, commercials allow people to make themselves a cuppa, have a pee, read a book, talk to significant others - the last thing they need to do is figure out how to unsubscribe from them. You can't do that with your spam.
Again, minimization of nuisance value was always a high-priority for me
But not high-priority enough for you to stop sending UCE to people who don't want it.
If you believe your method is effective, what happens when 10000 small business decide they want to do the same. Now that's 10,000 extra emails arriving in everyone's inbox. That's 10,000 unsubscribe requests they have to send to get them off something they weren't interested in in the first place.
Yes, you saying "spam" over there in the corner doesn't affect things, but when 10,000 other "reputable" organisations are doing the same thing, thats 10,000 people saying "spam" -- and _that_ drowns out everything else. You are part of the problem.
Its mathematically ludicrous to expect everyone with an email address to have to unsubscribe from things they don't want. The apparent reason spam works is because it requires one idiot in a million emails to take the bait. That leaves 999,999 unsubscribe requests that just you have to handle. That's 9,999,990,000 (ten thousand less than ten billion emails -- 10,000 business all finding one idiot) unsubscribe requests that need handling by our 10,000 small businesses.
The numbers and volume (consequently network availability) required to handle a proper unsubscribe request will bring the Internet to its knees in minutes.
Instead of mistargeting 999,999 people, why not concentrate on that stupid tosser that buys your products, and leave the rest of us in peace (until we individually request otherwise). That lowers the costs to people not interested in your product, it reduces the cost of infrastructure you need to do your job properly (assuming spammers could ever do their job properly in the first place), and then reduces the damage and destruction that spamming causes.
It sure is all wrong. Rather than work with the flexibility and strength of th web, this advertising model tries to impose dead-tree mentality on a medium that isn't restricted to visual.
Also websites relying on graphical advertising to pay the bills need to realise this decision cannot be enforced on visitors. To use banner advertising on a website as the main revenue stream is a bad business model.
Nothing bears client side tools for targetted advertising. Its obvious that targetted advertising is more successful than non-targetted. IMO, the Gator case is more about sour grapes "I wish I had thought of that" than anything else.
No I don't use Gator (by choice), or Javascript or Java, or Flash. And the Lynx option is looking better and better for getting real value from the web these days.
I mean, even slasdot is getting paid for the ads on the site. And if those ads don't show up because gator replaced them, then gator is indirectly stealing revenue from slashdot.
What you are in effect saying is that switching off images in a browser is theft (so is using Lynx, and Google). There's nothing illegal or wrong in not requesting all the elements in an HTML page. You can check the HTML recommendation if you want, but there is nothing there that says anything above HTML is mandatory for a browser to request - every resource above plain text has a textual or HTML alternative for browsers that do not support, or do not want to support a certain resource.
This indirect theft argument is silly. Images or plugins can't be forced on users. You are also setting a dangerous precedent against proxy and caching servers too.
When Gator shows a different advert in the advert box, slashdot does not lose money (they are paid for the number of times the advert is actually requested). The original advertiser does not lose money (since no advert of theirs was shown).
The only thing Gator could be guilty of is fradulently misrepresenting an advert as that of the website. That is not theft.
The practice of changing elements on an HTML page, or not requesting certain images, stylesheets and objects, is not illegal. Business people need to learn this lesson rather quickly. The web is a flexible medium (and always has been).
Why on earth would you as an end-user actively want the adverts of a website replaced with adverts from Gator?
Because Gator knows more about what I like and don't like that its in a better position than a mere website owner for determining which adverts are beneficial to me.
Why bother with an advert that isn't targetted properly?
Surely the whole point of an online adverts is to target realistically potential customers. Funding websites is just a symptom of a failed approach to on-line advertising.
Run the HTML source through something like Lynx - which will parse out just pure text - then spam-parse that. HTML is just text with funny markers in it (tags). Eliminate the tags - and ignorable white space.
Isn't it embarassing that the old racist apartheid government looks competent in comparison to the current baboons in power?
To be completely fair, I doubt the apartheid government would have allowed any internet access, because that would break down the created socialogical barriers, and open white South Africa to criticism that could conceivably ignore like the proverbial mushroom in the dark.
There was a lot of censorship during the eighties, so there would have been a very strong argument to prevent the freedom the internet provides from being used by any SA resident.
Slashdot Mirror
Unlike you, I don't see the value of sitting infront of a monitor all evening clicking links like a semi-trained gopher, gawking at flickery tricks like a magpie -- Oh look a blinky text cursor -- . I'd rather go out and see a movie on a large screen, a nice restaurant and finishing it with an exquisite company of friends. Not watching geekaws on a 17 inch monitor.
Now with HTML correctly describing the structure of the content, I can spend more time with friends, and less looking at your blinky things. Because my agent will peruse your site, see nothing of value, and won't bother to record it (or add it to the trash filter of sites to avoid).
Yes, there will be other people like you not having a life, and want to look at your geegaw portfolio. I have a life, the web is just a tool, and at the moment a manually-intensive tool, and judging by your efforts it will remain that way.
If you believe that javascript development is slowed, then your techniques are up the creek along with your business model, and you are effectively charging the client for your incompetance and lack of skills, rather than your demonstration of existing skills.
Why you lot (webdesigners) consistently insist on reinventing the wheel at each turn, and yet still only deliver triangular wheels (because its an improvement of one bump over the square wheel) -- this is beyond me, and seems to be about pure greed rather than doing a good quality job and being proud of it.
Shoddy workmanship, that's what _I_ call it.
- Netscape purchase price: $4.2 billion
- AOL user online purchases in 2001: $100 billion
- Watching IE-only websites go down the tubes: priceless
Creating an inaccessible website may be cool,(With due respect to Mastercard, naturally)
If you are relying on a browser supporting CSS and DOM, then you are in for a very rough time.
Have you actually _considered_ why people use older browsers. It doesn't take a genius to figure out that its not because they want cutting edge over-crufted websites. They want information. If your information cannot be presented without enforcing a brand, Netscape 4 makes an excellent website filter.
With a free choice, Netscape 4 is chosen by people who want the content without the bloat. By authoring in the style above, you are giving them exactly what they want.
People who tend to use Netscape 4 out of choice also have the intelligence to customise it for their specific requirements -- user defined style sheet -- why prevent that by forcing a typically "presentation-only" unreadable font? No, given good content and clean markup, the website is completely usable in Netscape 4. Leave the presentation to the browser-user -- they know better than you and me what fonts and what layout suits them.
Authoring for the World Wide Web 101
Take just the content of one of your pages, and create a simple HTML document that correctly describes the structure of your content. Encapsulate that content within a div, and give it an id.
Now underneath, create another div for your navigation. Your navigation will tend to be a list of links.
Now create another div before the content div and stick your logo graphics in there.
Now you are done with the HTML and you have a page that displays in all html compliant browsers.
Now, and _only_ now can you insert your presentation, like this: Reference a CSS file in your document header. Now create a stylesheet that encapsulates the placement of your div's, style your fonts, colour with your crayons.
Simple when you approach the problem from the right direction.
The only reason people have started manipulating their User Agent string is because fuckwits like you can't do your job properly by making your content fully accessible in the first place.
Look how many pages assume that MSIE and NN4 are the only possible browsers on the planet. 2 browsers out of 1000 -- that's shocking and idiotic.
Why not deliver innovative improvements instead - things that help solve real business problems, rather than an irritating "how-may-I-screw-up-your-suicide-note-today" talking paperclip.
Taking the example of email harvesting posioning, have you thought about something along the lines of the following:
I expect that you probably have a list of known honeypots, so why not _share_ spam relay tests? So if someone does a spam relay test on your honeypot - you'll probably have the entire contents of the email - send that to a few other honeypots, and duplicate being the sender through that open relay. So the email address has several open relay "notifications" -- but these are all honeypotted.
This poisons the list of open relays by increasing the number of honeypots.
(I'm assuming that deliberately running a honeypot is an effort to reduce the level of spam, so helping our poor spammer out may be beneficial).
Its called freedom of choice. Of course you don't understand it - it's not in a spammer's interest to conceed that people can make their own minds up over what they want in their inboxes.
Interesting (again in its most widest and incorrect sense) that all the examples you quote above are a result of _user_choice_ (They put the TV on, they buy a magazine, they open their browser and type in the magical URL http://www.slashdot.org). Now where exactly is the user choice _before_ receiving your crap?
*cricket's chirping in the background*
Get off your dead camel. The presence of an inbox does not give you the permission to dump your junk in it.
If you believe your method is effective, what happens when 10000 small business decide they want to do the same. Now that's 10,000 extra emails arriving in everyone's inbox. That's 10,000 unsubscribe requests they have to send to get them off something they weren't interested in in the first place.
Yes, you saying "spam" over there in the corner doesn't affect things, but when 10,000 other "reputable" organisations are doing the same thing, thats 10,000 people saying "spam" -- and _that_ drowns out everything else. You are part of the problem.
Its mathematically ludicrous to expect everyone with an email address to have to unsubscribe from things they don't want. The apparent reason spam works is because it requires one idiot in a million emails to take the bait. That leaves 999,999 unsubscribe requests that just you have to handle. That's 9,999,990,000 (ten thousand less than ten billion emails -- 10,000 business all finding one idiot) unsubscribe requests that need handling by our 10,000 small businesses.
The numbers and volume (consequently network availability) required to handle a proper unsubscribe request will bring the Internet to its knees in minutes.
Instead of mistargeting 999,999 people, why not concentrate on that stupid tosser that buys your products, and leave the rest of us in peace (until we individually request otherwise). That lowers the costs to people not interested in your product, it reduces the cost of infrastructure you need to do your job properly (assuming spammers could ever do their job properly in the first place), and then reduces the damage and destruction that spamming causes.
It sure is all wrong. Rather than work with the flexibility and strength of th web, this advertising model tries to impose dead-tree mentality on a medium that isn't restricted to visual.
Also websites relying on graphical advertising to pay the bills need to realise this decision cannot be enforced on visitors. To use banner advertising on a website as the main revenue stream is a bad business model.
Nothing bears client side tools for targetted advertising. Its obvious that targetted advertising is more successful than non-targetted. IMO, the Gator case is more about sour grapes "I wish I had thought of that" than anything else.
No I don't use Gator (by choice), or Javascript or Java, or Flash. And the Lynx option is looking better and better for getting real value from the web these days.
What you are in effect saying is that switching off images in a browser is theft (so is using Lynx, and Google). There's nothing illegal or wrong in not requesting all the elements in an HTML page. You can check the HTML recommendation if you want, but there is nothing there that says anything above HTML is mandatory for a browser to request - every resource above plain text has a textual or HTML alternative for browsers that do not support, or do not want to support a certain resource.
This indirect theft argument is silly. Images or plugins can't be forced on users. You are also setting a dangerous precedent against proxy and caching servers too.
When Gator shows a different advert in the advert box, slashdot does not lose money (they are paid for the number of times the advert is actually requested). The original advertiser does not lose money (since no advert of theirs was shown).
The only thing Gator could be guilty of is fradulently misrepresenting an advert as that of the website. That is not theft.
The practice of changing elements on an HTML page, or not requesting certain images, stylesheets and objects, is not illegal. Business people need to learn this lesson rather quickly. The web is a flexible medium (and always has been).
How is this different to me switching off images and disabling ad-abused plugins?
Because Gator knows more about what I like and don't like that its in a better position than a mere website owner for determining which adverts are beneficial to me.
Why bother with an advert that isn't targetted properly?
Surely the whole point of an online adverts is to target realistically potential customers. Funding websites is just a symptom of a failed approach to on-line advertising.
Run the HTML source through something like Lynx - which will parse out just pure text - then spam-parse that. HTML is just text with funny markers in it (tags). Eliminate the tags - and ignorable white space.
Isn't it embarassing that the old racist apartheid government looks competent in comparison to the current baboons in power?
To be completely fair, I doubt the apartheid government would have allowed any internet access, because that would break down the created socialogical barriers, and open white South Africa to criticism that could conceivably ignore like the proverbial mushroom in the dark.
There was a lot of censorship during the eighties, so there would have been a very strong argument to prevent the freedom the internet provides from being used by any SA resident.