My rule is simple: the more terminology a person gets wrong, the less reliable their advice. It's something I have observed over many years, and is very reliable. I'm sure others have similar rules. If anybody decides to screw around with terminology because they say it's easier to say "tag" than "attribute", fair enough, but it will have an impact on how others percieve them.
In particular, Bobby used to fail documents containing alt="" - which lead to a surge in the popularity of <img src="/images/spacer.gif" alt="Spacer"> - which does harm accessibility, and is bad advice, especially as most documents using spacer images use them by the dozen.
Going back to my original point, I see no reason to trust somebody who says "always use alt tags", because of the aforementioned rule, and I see no reason to trust Cynthia because of the problems its own report has. This is not snobbery, this is simply a good rule of thumb for judging what is useful and what is harmful.
XLM parsing (just like the TeX language) has a problem that when there are problems in the input files, the situation diverges into two different caes, one requires an infinite memory and the other infinite time to deal gracefully with errors.
Huh? The specification is very clear. If there is a problem in the input stream, there is one, and only one thing to be done: terminal failure.
Boo-fricken-hoo. I'm so hurt. Can't you read? Or is there something that confuses you when I say "This domain is mainly used for email"? Or maybe, just maybe, did you resort to insults when you found you couldn't argue against me effectively?
If your boss said "Make sure we use alt tags!", would you refuse to do anything until he corrected it to 'alt attributes'?
Management doesn't have to justify itself to employees, and management doesn't need to know HTML in-depth. An accessibility tool, and somebody writing articles about accessibility on the web has to do both.
you are just trying to look superior for remembering an inconsequential detail.
Hardly. If you look at my original post, you'll see that it was in the context of other accessibility problems. Someone else already pointed out that it fails its own pages.
You think the difference between an attribute and a tag is inconsequential? Perhaps it's not a big deal if you are talking to somebody who doesn't need to know the difference, but if it comes from somebody who actually needs to know these things, it is a big deal. I seem to recall Bobby would give quite bad advice, that, if followed, would reduce a website's accessibility.
Bad advice is worse than no advice at all. Mixing up two completely distinct components of an HTML document is equivelent to broadcasting a "no clue" signal.
Now THAT is just splitting hairs. You know exactly what is meant by 'alt tags'
Yes, I do. But anybody qualified to assess the accessibility of a site would not make that mistake.
it's much easier and quicker to say than "alt attributes"
Bollocks. You don't just swap words when you feel like it. If a hardware techie started calling my monitor a TV, I'd run a mile. Attributes and tags are fundamentally different things, and there's no excuse for confusing them.
If your javascript function returns a specific value (possibly 0, but I don't remember for sure), the browser won't follow the link after opening the popup.
Some sites look at your user-agent string and tell you to fuck off if they don't recognize that browser
For instance, argos.co.uk will refuse to handle gecko-based browsers. Idiocy.
Although their web pages seem to render perfectly in Lynx/w3m/elinks/Mozilla/Konquerer/Opera, you can only log into the site with a user-agent of IE/Netscape.
...and of course, their logs show that people only use ie/netscape when visiting their site (because people using other browsers lie in their ua string, or just can't access the site at all). It's a vicious circle.
How on earth are they supposed to navigate a Flash site when there are no ALT attributes to guide them and their screen readers can't "read" a.swf file.
The correct way of embedding a Flash presentation into an HTML document is to use the <object> element. Alternative representations of the embedded object should be encoded as the contents of the <object> element. This is actually far more flexible than using an alt attribute.
Unfortunately, browser bugs interfere with this quite a bit. Additionally, most flash authors are not willing/capable of producing an alternative representation of their Flash objects, so even though the capability is there, it won't make much difference in practice.
Okay, first let me start by saying that you either have serious English comprehension / logic problems, or you are trolling. Either way, this is my last response in this thread.
I said that this was an interesting way for the government to balance out loss from copyright infringement. You've been arguining all along with me, not realizing this.
No, you were talking about theft. Not copyright infringement. Your very first sentence:
Everyone pays when people steal.
Your position may be that they are identical, I was responding directly to your assertion that analogies involving theft can directly relate to this situation.
You also make mistakes. "Copyright infringement does not involve taking anything. It involves creating something." -- incorrect. It involves copying something without permission.
You create a copy. What is my mistake?
In no way am I ignoring fair use. I've not mentioned it once.
You ignored it when you stated:
Copying stuff without permission is a crime.
...without any qualifiers at all. It's a clearly, demonstrably untrue statement, and the fact that you are now acknowledging fair use exists means that you know this.
You also are trying to justify copyright infringement: "Copyright infringement is not theft." Copyright infringement is theft.
Murder is not theft. Clearly, I am now trying to justify murder, right?
I'd take advice like that with a pinch of salt, as the person dispensing it clearly demonstrates no understanding of the basic structure of an HTML document.
There is no such thing as an "alt tag". There is an alt attribute, which is a completely different thing.
The page is accessible if it can be properly viewed and navigated using a text-based browser (i.e. Lynx).
That's a dangerous assumption. Take guiltless image use as an example. Works fine in lynx, but fails miserably when you use a browser that renders CSS but does not display background images.
Website accessibility is a complex topic, and there's no way you can automatically test something like this. The best you can do is provide hints on what to look for.
I'm not particularly inclined to trust Cynthia, as the report document produced uses font sizes set at 12px and 10px verdana (!), and gives horizontal scrolling at 1024x768.
Any time you take something or get something which has a ticket price set on the economy without paying for it, you are stealing.
That would include birthday presents. If you are going to argue definitions, Webster is more authorative than you or I:
The act of stealing; specifically, the felonious taking and removing of personal property, with an intent to deprive the rightful owner of the same
Copyright infringement does not involve taking anything. It involves creating something.
If you download files online which are not yours and which you haven't been given permission to, you are infringing on copyright.
Where did I say otherwise?
Any time you reduce the number of possible sales, through things like copying items which you feel "shouldn't be scarce,"...
Don't put words in my mouth. Where did I say that copyrighted works should not be subject to an artificial scarcity?
... you are stealing.
You can say it over and over again, but that doesn't make it any truer.
Economics is a science where the seller and buyer try to negotiate the fairist and most efficient price. Like any good experiment, the pricing set in economics needs proper control variables in place. When you steal or copy items without paying for them, you throw off the balance of the experiment.
What does that have to do with anything? Are you having trouble reading? I AM NOT TRYING TO JUSTIFY COPYRIGHT INFRINGEMENT.
Copying stuff without permission is a crime.
No it isn't. Firstly, it has to be a copyrighted work. Secondly, you are ignoring fair use. Thirdly I AM NOT TRYING TO JUSTIFY COPYRIGHT INFRINGEMENT.
Now, if you still can't grasp that fairly simple point, I don't think it's worth replying to me, because I'll just be repeating myself again if I respond to it.
IE does not has not moved an inch standards wise since IE 4
That is not true. In ie6, for example, they have finally got the box model right. The css support has come a long way from ie4.
Is it still pathetic compared with mozilla, opera, konqueror, etc? Yes. But don't try and say that they haven't done anything, because it just isn't true.
Just try using a correct XHTML MIME type, or using XHTML DOM (which is read-only in XHTML) or CSS (changes to case rules in XHTML) in IE and it will fail. Mozilla and Opera (and no doubt Konq also) do all the above just fine.
Konqueror does not. See Bug #52665. Last I checked, there was an XHTML icon on the Safari website, but it didn't handle XHTML properly either.
Until MS update IE the web stays looking just as it does now for 70-80% of users, however innovative the rest of the world gets.
Of course, they could just sit back and do nothing, as www authors are pretty much forced to support ie due to its market share.
Both deprive the owner of revenue generated by a sale.
Not true at all, and putting it in bold doesn't make you any more convincing. There is no right to revenue, you don't own it, it cannot be taken from you. There is no guarantee somebody who infringes on copyright would pay for a legitimate copy.
This is the, "it costs 2$ to make, so I'm only taking 2$ from them, not the 10$ it sells for" argument which doesn't work.
No it isn't. That would be if you actually stole a physical item from them. I'm saying that you aren't taking anything from them.
How can I make it any clearer? Copyright law only gives you an artificial scarcity over your creations. It does not give you the right to profit. That is your responsibility. If somebody infringes on your copyright, it's attacking the artificial scarcity directly.
Theft, on the other hand, is simply depriving the owner of something. Not an abstract concept, like a sale (which you can't guarantee), but something physical. They are fundamentally different crimes. Calling copyright infringement theft is like calling trespassing "stealing space".
If you have the money for something, you buy it. Otherwise you do without. This is a basic rule of society.
Look, can you not read properly? I am not trying to justify copyright infringement.
if the information is held on a public site, it is public
That is right, it is public information. However, the data as a whole can, and probably is, copyrighted - and reproducing it could well be copyright violation.
As far as I am aware, the law is very clear on this - individual pieces of information are not copyrightable, but a collection of that information is copyrightable. The difference between a phone number and the phone book.
You can rationalize it as saying there's "no loss" when you copy something without paying for it, but that's a lie.
I'm not rationalising it, and I'm not lying. Theft and copyright infringement are fundamentally different crimes. One deprives the owner of property, which then must be replaced at the owner's expense, one does not.
Have you stolen something? Why, yes, you have. You've stolen a copy of the software
No. You've made a copy of the software. The copyright holder didn't possess that copy, and you are not depriving them of it. Notice how I am not justifying it, I'm only talking about the difference between the two crimes.
a sale that would otherwise have remained a sale.
Copies do not equate to sales. They are different things - yes, in some cases, a copy is subsitututed for a sale. This still is not theft. It is a reduction in effectiveness of the artificial scarcity put in place by copyright law - a market force erring toward normality.
Again, theft is theft.
And copyright infringement is copyright infringement. The two statements are about as meaningful as saying "I'm right because I say I am".
I'm no software designer, but surely we could find some concept for migrating off of SMTP and POP and to a better, more secure protocol.
It's not a technical issue (ignoring open relays, which can already be fixed without changing any protocols).
The fundamental issue is that one of the most important uses of email is to let anybody, anywhere email you, with no hassle. Of course, spammers take advantage of that.
What's needed is accountability. Give someone internet or smtp access? Make sure you have a way of billing them for any spam they send, and put it in big letters when they sign up.
What sale are you talking about? Does the tax apply when I buy a hard drive? A CPU? Or just a complete system? Because it sounds like they either require registration, or everybody will be getting their geek friends to build their computers from scratch to avoid the tax.
Everyone pays when people steal. You might not steal, but you have to pay for it. When something is stolen from a store, the company has 2 choices: take a loss (maybe go out of business), or pass on the costs.
Yes, but if you think this applies to this situation, you are sorely mistaken. You know why? Copyright infringement is not theft. The RIAA constantly goes on about "stealing music", but unless you are walking out of a shop with something you haven't paid for, it's not stealing.
Why does this mean your point is invalid? Because there is no loss. If I download one song without paying, the record companies don't lose any money. If I download a hundred songs without paying, the record companies don't lose any money. If I download a million songs without paying, the record companies don't lose any money.
If somebody walks out of a shop with something they haven't paid for, the shop has had property stolen, and they need to pay to replace it. The money has to come from somewhere, I agree. The same is not true of copyright infringement.
I do have a problem with applying your own stylesheets to other's work.
I do so to make websites more usable for me. Surely one of the primary purposes of any professional website (as opposed to an artistic/personal one) is to be as useful as possible to the end-user? So, following on from that, wouldn't it be better to encourage use of user stylesheets?
The most popular user-stylesheet rules I have seen are:
body, p, a, td { font-size: 1em !important; }
(to make stupid font sizes less stupid)
table { width: 100% !important; }
(to avoid websites that only use half your window width, or worse, double your window width)
...and a whole load of colour-related rules to avoid stupid colour schemes. Things would be a lot better if people used css signatures though. Notice how a lot of it is merely protection from developer stupidity though.
Okay, well I'll put my money where my mouth is: here is my Flash site.
Well I don't have the plugin installed on this machine, so all I get is a blank page. I'm sure it's decent enough, but this kind of underlines my point, really.
Flash MX can basically mark up (boy does it ever mark up) every last bit of text in your Flash site, in the HTML frame file.
I don't see how it possibly can. The <meta> elements traditionally used are now ignored by virtually every search engine, and if you just dump a load of keywords into the html as content, you are liable to get blacklisted. Now if it actually put well marked-up content into the html, fair enough, but not even dedicated developer tools can do that properly. Your site, to use an example, has no text available to a search engine robot at all, besides the title of your page.
And there's robots.txt as well.
robots.txt merely tells robots what behaviour they should take, it doesn't supply them with anything to index.
MX made great strides for usability, which had the side-effect of including a lot more metadata, and therefore exposing a lot more raw functionality, in Flash SWFs.
I had heard this, they hired Jakob Nielsen for that. They've also opened up the swf file format, which is another good step.
Flash is all vector-based. The sizes and positions of things in Flash can be specified to a single decimal place of a pixel (i.e. 10.3, 14.9, etc.). This offers advantages for both resolution-independance as well as animation quality. Adobe After Effects, a raster-based animation program, also offers this feature. Think of it as a Nyquist Theorem kind of thing; higher resoltions from the source result in better looking images and motion. Not to mention superior antialiasing of text and vector edges.
I knew that flash was vector-based, I just didn't understand the difference between that and "absolute sub-pixel vector positioning". Just keyword bloat?
Anyway, I don't see the point in text anti-aliasing when it happens in my web browser "for free" when you use normal text. I don't see the point in sub-pixel rendering, because it ends up as pixels on my screen anyway.
Which plug-in? You know there's more than one, right?
The Flash plug-in.
Yeah, there's more than one. Ignoring platform-specific issues (such as the sound problem I mentioned that only exists in the unix-based plugins), you also have different versions (I remember a couple of flash applications that broke nastily in v5 when they were authored for v4), and different implementations (try using a macromedia version on a non-x86 unix).
Now, don't get me wrong, I basically agree with everything you're saying. It just bugs me when people (not you) blame Flash for being flexible and powerful. They should blame people who suck instead.
Given the massive amount of abuse associated with flash, I don't see this happening. You want attitudes to flash to change, hit your fellow flash developers with a cluebat:)
For example, a tremendous portion of all web-related traffic is simply sending text in bitmap form so a site can look "pretty". Then count in all of the very similar redundant images (in javascript rollovers), and then add in "graphically simple" images... that's a lot of traffic. All of this can, and should be replaced by much smaller and more efficient vector art.
While I'd say that vector images are certainly a big missing piece for the web (I'm waiting for proper svg support in browsers), I would completely disagree that you should send text as images, vector or otherwise.
I may have a high-resolution display that is capable of rendering serifs well, so I'd want to subtitute another font for sans-serifs most of the time. CSS allows me to do this, flash does not.
Normal text is indexable by search engines and other tools, and can be searched easily within the browser. Copy & paste works fine too. Does all of this work with flash?
It's very attractive if you want to deliver a self-contained web application (like a game)
True. I'm specifically addressing navigation implemented with flash though. I have no trouble accepting that there are good uses for flash.
I still think its scripting system and API are abyssmal, but if you're up for abuse you can make it do amazing things.
The authoring system ~v4 (I can't comment on other versions) is absolutely terrible, yes. I reminds me of the "click to program" things that were popular around 1990 - what was the one called, click 'n' play? I've played around with flash generated by php scripts, it looks promising, if a little buggy.
Something like Flash could replace HTML eventually.
I really hope not. The html wg has only just managed to properly separate content from presentation, it would be madness to glom it all back together again. There was a recent discussion about this on the www-html mailing list, actually, although that was centred around a markup language, the principle was the same.
Personally, I think that flash could be completely replaced by w3c technologies today, with a massive increase in usability/accessibility/ease-of-development if only the browser support was there. Check out scripted svg, the dom, ecmascript, smil, css, and so on.
You like your standard tools for searching and arranging your information. Flash sites disable many of these tools.
I agree. And I am a technical person. But it affects average users even more than me. If you take away the consistency of the interface, newbies will flounder. It's a fact, plenty of studies have been done on it - it's basic usability. Sure, they might notice different inconsistencies to me, but the effect is the same or worse.
A Flash site with its own interface is just dandy for certain applications, mostly those having to do with marketing, or presentation, or conceptual visualization.
I agree completely. But for a general-purpose website, for navigation - no way.
When I have a client that tells me they want a specific font, and sound effects
Clients ask for these kinds of things all the time. I say:
You can suggest a specific font, but if it's an unusual font, most people will see one of the more common fonts. Some people will override your font completely because they find another font easier to read. Which "normal" font do you want to use as a fallback? Not to mention the discussion of serif vs sans-serif and so on...
Sound can be highly irritating for many end-users, especially if they aren't expecting it. Virtually no high-profile business websites use sound, so unless there is a domain-specific reason for having sound, I would recommend against it. If there is a good reason for having sound, I would recommend that it not be activated automatically.
Of course, you can supply your own fonts with flash. Do sounds and specific fonts compare to removing the consistency of the user experience? No way. As for the next point:
and a 3d spin-around of their new shoe (for example), I say Flash every time.
Yes, something that needs this kind of interactivity (I'm assuming that you can zoom in, etc) would be a candidate for using flash, with a static image fallback. No way would I animate something like that on pageload though. Animations of that nature should begin animation when the user activates it (at least, when it's a looping animation).
It's a commerical, a glossy interactive brochure.
Advertising on the net is fundamentally different to "commercials". Media like TV are find for that kind of thing, it's non-interactive. The internet is user-driven, and when surfing, people are incredible task-oriented. A "glossy interactive brochure" exists on a website for one reason - to let the visitors get the information, and perhaps to order from it.
When flash helps that goal, I say go for it. Can a user get a better idea of what the product is like with a zooming, 3d model of it? In some cases, yes. Does it hinder the user (page load time, plugin popups, non-standard interface) without any real benefit? In a hell of a lot of cases, yes.
There are plenty of design agencies out there offering flash as an added benefit for extra money. Of course they will recommend it, even if it doesn't help their client in any way.
My point is, don't blame the tech, and don't blame Flash for crappy navigation.
I agree, I never said otherwise. But website navigation with flash is usually an abuse of flash - I've certainly never seen an appropriate use of flash in this way.
in situations where one wants to immerse themselves and casually browse a rich experience with sound, the right fonts, and a generally superior (depending...) experience, Flash is great.
Very few websites fall into this category. Very few users go to a site, and want to sit back and watch a commercial. They have a purpose, and it's the website's job to give them the information they need. Websites that don't do that are measurably less successful than those that do.
Oh by the way, indexing is not a problem.
No, if you provide alternate navigation that isn't flash-based. Most people clueless enough to use flash for navigation are clueless enough to not realise they need to do this. I know of no search engine that parses, or even retrieves, swf files.
And stylesheets, as cool as they are, cannot compete with absolute sub-pixel vector positioning.
You are merely picking one attribute of flash and claiming that stylesheets cannot compete because of it? Please explain what "absolute sub-pixel vector positioning" means, and why it is useful. Then explain how I can override it in my browser to get the look that I want.
Not to mention, as a web designer, I have far less problems debugging a Flash site between browsers, as the plug-in is more consistent than the HTML engine.
Which plug-in? You know there's more than one, right? Personally, I routinely disabled flash on all my machines, because there was a bug that hung my browser whenever flash tried to access the audio device. I only enable it when I absolutely have to (usually, I just go to a different website). I can think of a single website I visit on a (semi) regular basis that uses flash, and it provides a non-flash interface too. Guess which I find more convenient?
Oh, and as an example of how sound on a website can be irritating, visit this at work: Top 10 Cutest Kittens. Actually, don't visit it at work, I don't want to get you fired:)
Flash can be amazing, especially when it's used for navigation,
Flash as navigation? It allows you to completely destroy the usability of the site. Middle click to open in a new window? Gone. Right click to select "open in new tab"? Gone. Tab through links? Gone (or possibly there if somebody using flash has a clue, unlikely). Typeahead finding a link? Gone.
The reason people like flash for things like navigation is because they want to reimplement the interface. This is almost certainly a terrible idea from the perspective of most websites, and for most users.
It is also not supported by any search engines, so good luck having your site indexed (unless you provide a fallback, most flash developers don't even know how to do this).
because it allows for absolute positioning and control as opposed to
Control is a four-letter word in the mouth of a web author. I don't want you to control my interface. I want to view your site how I wish. All the w3c technologies allow this, why can't flash?
<table>
spacer row...
content...
spacer...
I think you mean <link rel="stylesheet"...>
It allows the developer to create a completely self contained application, free of the shackles of the HTML dinosaur.
Great. But basic navigation through a normal website isn't an application. Even if it was, I'd expect it to work like all my other applications.
Slashdot Mirror
It's getting hard to tell you cowards apart :)
My rule is simple: the more terminology a person gets wrong, the less reliable their advice. It's something I have observed over many years, and is very reliable. I'm sure others have similar rules. If anybody decides to screw around with terminology because they say it's easier to say "tag" than "attribute", fair enough, but it will have an impact on how others percieve them.
In particular, Bobby used to fail documents containing alt="" - which lead to a surge in the popularity of <img src="/images/spacer.gif" alt="Spacer"> - which does harm accessibility, and is bad advice, especially as most documents using spacer images use them by the dozen.
Going back to my original point, I see no reason to trust somebody who says "always use alt tags", because of the aforementioned rule, and I see no reason to trust Cynthia because of the problems its own report has. This is not snobbery, this is simply a good rule of thumb for judging what is useful and what is harmful.
Huh? The specification is very clear. If there is a problem in the input stream, there is one, and only one thing to be done: terminal failure.
Did you actually read the article?
I can sum it up very easily:
He's looking for a nicer api for processing XML, he's not looking to replace XML entirely.
Boo-fricken-hoo. I'm so hurt. Can't you read? Or is there something that confuses you when I say "This domain is mainly used for email"? Or maybe, just maybe, did you resort to insults when you found you couldn't argue against me effectively?
Management doesn't have to justify itself to employees, and management doesn't need to know HTML in-depth. An accessibility tool, and somebody writing articles about accessibility on the web has to do both.
Hardly. If you look at my original post, you'll see that it was in the context of other accessibility problems. Someone else already pointed out that it fails its own pages.
You think the difference between an attribute and a tag is inconsequential? Perhaps it's not a big deal if you are talking to somebody who doesn't need to know the difference, but if it comes from somebody who actually needs to know these things, it is a big deal. I seem to recall Bobby would give quite bad advice, that, if followed, would reduce a website's accessibility.
Bad advice is worse than no advice at all. Mixing up two completely distinct components of an HTML document is equivelent to broadcasting a "no clue" signal.
Yes, I do. But anybody qualified to assess the accessibility of a site would not make that mistake.
Bollocks. You don't just swap words when you feel like it. If a hardware techie started calling my monitor a TV, I'd run a mile. Attributes and tags are fundamentally different things, and there's no excuse for confusing them.
You need to return false:
<a href="alternative.html" onclick="dostuff(); return false;">...</a>For instance, argos.co.uk will refuse to handle gecko-based browsers. Idiocy.
The correct way of embedding a Flash presentation into an HTML document is to use the <object> element. Alternative representations of the embedded object should be encoded as the contents of the <object> element. This is actually far more flexible than using an alt attribute.
Unfortunately, browser bugs interfere with this quite a bit. Additionally, most flash authors are not willing/capable of producing an alternative representation of their Flash objects, so even though the capability is there, it won't make much difference in practice.
Okay, first let me start by saying that you either have serious English comprehension / logic problems, or you are trolling. Either way, this is my last response in this thread.
No, you were talking about theft. Not copyright infringement. Your very first sentence:
Your position may be that they are identical, I was responding directly to your assertion that analogies involving theft can directly relate to this situation.
You create a copy. What is my mistake?
You ignored it when you stated:
Murder is not theft. Clearly, I am now trying to justify murder, right?
Bye now.
I'd take advice like that with a pinch of salt, as the person dispensing it clearly demonstrates no understanding of the basic structure of an HTML document.
There is no such thing as an "alt tag". There is an alt attribute, which is a completely different thing.
That's a dangerous assumption. Take guiltless image use as an example. Works fine in lynx, but fails miserably when you use a browser that renders CSS but does not display background images.
Website accessibility is a complex topic, and there's no way you can automatically test something like this. The best you can do is provide hints on what to look for.
I'm not particularly inclined to trust Cynthia, as the report document produced uses font sizes set at 12px and 10px verdana (!), and gives horizontal scrolling at 1024x768.
One tool I have found to be of high quality is Accessibility Valet.
That would include birthday presents. If you are going to argue definitions, Webster is more authorative than you or I:
Copyright infringement does not involve taking anything. It involves creating something.
Where did I say otherwise?
Don't put words in my mouth. Where did I say that copyrighted works should not be subject to an artificial scarcity?
You can say it over and over again, but that doesn't make it any truer.
What does that have to do with anything? Are you having trouble reading? I AM NOT TRYING TO JUSTIFY COPYRIGHT INFRINGEMENT.
No it isn't. Firstly, it has to be a copyrighted work. Secondly, you are ignoring fair use. Thirdly I AM NOT TRYING TO JUSTIFY COPYRIGHT INFRINGEMENT.
Now, if you still can't grasp that fairly simple point, I don't think it's worth replying to me, because I'll just be repeating myself again if I respond to it.
That is not true. In ie6, for example, they have finally got the box model right. The css support has come a long way from ie4.
Is it still pathetic compared with mozilla, opera, konqueror, etc? Yes. But don't try and say that they haven't done anything, because it just isn't true.
Konqueror does not. See Bug #52665. Last I checked, there was an XHTML icon on the Safari website, but it didn't handle XHTML properly either.
Of course, they could just sit back and do nothing, as www authors are pretty much forced to support ie due to its market share.
Not true at all, and putting it in bold doesn't make you any more convincing. There is no right to revenue, you don't own it, it cannot be taken from you. There is no guarantee somebody who infringes on copyright would pay for a legitimate copy.
No it isn't. That would be if you actually stole a physical item from them. I'm saying that you aren't taking anything from them.
How can I make it any clearer? Copyright law only gives you an artificial scarcity over your creations. It does not give you the right to profit. That is your responsibility. If somebody infringes on your copyright, it's attacking the artificial scarcity directly.
Theft, on the other hand, is simply depriving the owner of something. Not an abstract concept, like a sale (which you can't guarantee), but something physical. They are fundamentally different crimes. Calling copyright infringement theft is like calling trespassing "stealing space".
Look, can you not read properly? I am not trying to justify copyright infringement.
That is right, it is public information. However, the data as a whole can, and probably is, copyrighted - and reproducing it could well be copyright violation.
As far as I am aware, the law is very clear on this - individual pieces of information are not copyrightable, but a collection of that information is copyrightable. The difference between a phone number and the phone book.
I'm not rationalising it, and I'm not lying. Theft and copyright infringement are fundamentally different crimes. One deprives the owner of property, which then must be replaced at the owner's expense, one does not.
No. You've made a copy of the software. The copyright holder didn't possess that copy, and you are not depriving them of it. Notice how I am not justifying it, I'm only talking about the difference between the two crimes.
Copies do not equate to sales. They are different things - yes, in some cases, a copy is subsitututed for a sale. This still is not theft. It is a reduction in effectiveness of the artificial scarcity put in place by copyright law - a market force erring toward normality.
And copyright infringement is copyright infringement. The two statements are about as meaningful as saying "I'm right because I say I am".
It's not a technical issue (ignoring open relays, which can already be fixed without changing any protocols).
The fundamental issue is that one of the most important uses of email is to let anybody, anywhere email you, with no hassle. Of course, spammers take advantage of that.
What's needed is accountability. Give someone internet or smtp access? Make sure you have a way of billing them for any spam they send, and put it in big letters when they sign up.
Take a look at this article for how to do it with mozilla. Unfortunately, it requires a restart before any changes are made.
Opera has support for user stylesheets that can be toggled on and off with a keypress though.
What sale are you talking about? Does the tax apply when I buy a hard drive? A CPU? Or just a complete system? Because it sounds like they either require registration, or everybody will be getting their geek friends to build their computers from scratch to avoid the tax.
Yes, but if you think this applies to this situation, you are sorely mistaken. You know why? Copyright infringement is not theft. The RIAA constantly goes on about "stealing music", but unless you are walking out of a shop with something you haven't paid for, it's not stealing.
Why does this mean your point is invalid? Because there is no loss. If I download one song without paying, the record companies don't lose any money. If I download a hundred songs without paying, the record companies don't lose any money. If I download a million songs without paying, the record companies don't lose any money.
If somebody walks out of a shop with something they haven't paid for, the shop has had property stolen, and they need to pay to replace it. The money has to come from somewhere, I agree. The same is not true of copyright infringement.
I do so to make websites more usable for me. Surely one of the primary purposes of any professional website (as opposed to an artistic/personal one) is to be as useful as possible to the end-user? So, following on from that, wouldn't it be better to encourage use of user stylesheets?
The most popular user-stylesheet rules I have seen are:
body, p, a, td { font-size: 1em !important; } (to make stupid font sizes less stupid)table { width: 100% !important; } (to avoid websites that only use half your window width, or worse, double your window width)
Well I don't have the plugin installed on this machine, so all I get is a blank page. I'm sure it's decent enough, but this kind of underlines my point, really.
I don't see how it possibly can. The <meta> elements traditionally used are now ignored by virtually every search engine, and if you just dump a load of keywords into the html as content, you are liable to get blacklisted. Now if it actually put well marked-up content into the html, fair enough, but not even dedicated developer tools can do that properly. Your site, to use an example, has no text available to a search engine robot at all, besides the title of your page.
robots.txt merely tells robots what behaviour they should take, it doesn't supply them with anything to index.
I had heard this, they hired Jakob Nielsen for that. They've also opened up the swf file format, which is another good step.
I knew that flash was vector-based, I just didn't understand the difference between that and "absolute sub-pixel vector positioning". Just keyword bloat?
Anyway, I don't see the point in text anti-aliasing when it happens in my web browser "for free" when you use normal text. I don't see the point in sub-pixel rendering, because it ends up as pixels on my screen anyway.
Yeah, there's more than one. Ignoring platform-specific issues (such as the sound problem I mentioned that only exists in the unix-based plugins), you also have different versions (I remember a couple of flash applications that broke nastily in v5 when they were authored for v4), and different implementations (try using a macromedia version on a non-x86 unix).
Given the massive amount of abuse associated with flash, I don't see this happening. You want attitudes to flash to change, hit your fellow flash developers with a cluebat :)
While I'd say that vector images are certainly a big missing piece for the web (I'm waiting for proper svg support in browsers), I would completely disagree that you should send text as images, vector or otherwise.
I may have a high-resolution display that is capable of rendering serifs well, so I'd want to subtitute another font for sans-serifs most of the time. CSS allows me to do this, flash does not.
Normal text is indexable by search engines and other tools, and can be searched easily within the browser. Copy & paste works fine too. Does all of this work with flash?
True. I'm specifically addressing navigation implemented with flash though. I have no trouble accepting that there are good uses for flash.
The authoring system ~v4 (I can't comment on other versions) is absolutely terrible, yes. I reminds me of the "click to program" things that were popular around 1990 - what was the one called, click 'n' play? I've played around with flash generated by php scripts, it looks promising, if a little buggy.
I really hope not. The html wg has only just managed to properly separate content from presentation, it would be madness to glom it all back together again. There was a recent discussion about this on the www-html mailing list, actually, although that was centred around a markup language, the principle was the same.
Personally, I think that flash could be completely replaced by w3c technologies today, with a massive increase in usability/accessibility/ease-of-development if only the browser support was there. Check out scripted svg, the dom, ecmascript, smil, css, and so on.
I agree. And I am a technical person. But it affects average users even more than me. If you take away the consistency of the interface, newbies will flounder. It's a fact, plenty of studies have been done on it - it's basic usability. Sure, they might notice different inconsistencies to me, but the effect is the same or worse.
I agree completely. But for a general-purpose website, for navigation - no way.
Clients ask for these kinds of things all the time. I say:
Of course, you can supply your own fonts with flash. Do sounds and specific fonts compare to removing the consistency of the user experience? No way. As for the next point:
Yes, something that needs this kind of interactivity (I'm assuming that you can zoom in, etc) would be a candidate for using flash, with a static image fallback. No way would I animate something like that on pageload though. Animations of that nature should begin animation when the user activates it (at least, when it's a looping animation).
Advertising on the net is fundamentally different to "commercials". Media like TV are find for that kind of thing, it's non-interactive. The internet is user-driven, and when surfing, people are incredible task-oriented. A "glossy interactive brochure" exists on a website for one reason - to let the visitors get the information, and perhaps to order from it.
When flash helps that goal, I say go for it. Can a user get a better idea of what the product is like with a zooming, 3d model of it? In some cases, yes. Does it hinder the user (page load time, plugin popups, non-standard interface) without any real benefit? In a hell of a lot of cases, yes.
There are plenty of design agencies out there offering flash as an added benefit for extra money. Of course they will recommend it, even if it doesn't help their client in any way.
I agree, I never said otherwise. But website navigation with flash is usually an abuse of flash - I've certainly never seen an appropriate use of flash in this way.
Very few websites fall into this category. Very few users go to a site, and want to sit back and watch a commercial. They have a purpose, and it's the website's job to give them the information they need. Websites that don't do that are measurably less successful than those that do.
No, if you provide alternate navigation that isn't flash-based. Most people clueless enough to use flash for navigation are clueless enough to not realise they need to do this. I know of no search engine that parses, or even retrieves, swf files.
You are merely picking one attribute of flash and claiming that stylesheets cannot compete because of it? Please explain what "absolute sub-pixel vector positioning" means, and why it is useful. Then explain how I can override it in my browser to get the look that I want.
Which plug-in? You know there's more than one, right? Personally, I routinely disabled flash on all my machines, because there was a bug that hung my browser whenever flash tried to access the audio device. I only enable it when I absolutely have to (usually, I just go to a different website). I can think of a single website I visit on a (semi) regular basis that uses flash, and it provides a non-flash interface too. Guess which I find more convenient?
Oh, and as an example of how sound on a website can be irritating, visit this at work: Top 10 Cutest Kittens. Actually, don't visit it at work, I don't want to get you fired :)
If you are asking them for more information before you can assess the situation accurately, then ignore it until they contact you again.
If their email is fucked up, then they can't claim they notified you - who's to know you aren't running something like tmda?
If, on the other hand, it's a clear violation, tell your client to remove the offending files.
Flash as navigation? It allows you to completely destroy the usability of the site. Middle click to open in a new window? Gone. Right click to select "open in new tab"? Gone. Tab through links? Gone (or possibly there if somebody using flash has a clue, unlikely). Typeahead finding a link? Gone.
The reason people like flash for things like navigation is because they want to reimplement the interface. This is almost certainly a terrible idea from the perspective of most websites, and for most users.
It is also not supported by any search engines, so good luck having your site indexed (unless you provide a fallback, most flash developers don't even know how to do this).
Control is a four-letter word in the mouth of a web author. I don't want you to control my interface. I want to view your site how I wish. All the w3c technologies allow this, why can't flash?
I think you mean <link rel="stylesheet" ...>
Great. But basic navigation through a normal website isn't an application. Even if it was, I'd expect it to work like all my other applications.