[WEB4LIB] Re: browser differences
Rich Kulawiec
rsk at magpage.com
Fri Aug 2 11:55:59 EDT 2002
On Thu, Aug 01, 2002 at 10:30:18AM -0700, Kevin W. Bishop wrote:
> First and foremost, browser-neutral solutions should begin with markup that
> validates to W3C recommendations (you've chosen 4.0 Transitional). I'd be
> happy to take a closer look once the code validates.
I took a fast look at it with HTML tidy (latest version from sourceforge).
It looks pretty good in this regard, with the exception of a large number
of warnings of this type:
line 590 column 27 - Warning: '<' + '/' + letter not allowed here
line 591 column 24 - Warning: '<' + '/' + letter not allowed here
line 592 column 24 - Warning: '<' + '/' + letter not allowed here
line 593 column 18 - Warning: '<' + '/' + letter not allowed here
line 594 column 15 - Warning: '<' + '/' + letter not allowed here
line 595 column 15 - Warning: '<' + '/' + letter not allowed here
line 596 column 13 - Warning: '<' + '/' + letter not allowed here
But I don't think that's necessarily the cause of the problem.
To be honest, I'm not sure exactly what the problem is -- or to be more
precise, I'm not sure exactly what the author thinks the problem is, which
may or may not correspond with my idea of what it might be.
Here's what I see, using Amaya 6.1: a web page on a standard gray background.
There is a list of resources left-center; below that is identification
information for the library, links to a map, etc.
At right-center is a rectangular yellow box with "Talk to a librarian live"
in it, with a graphic of a tiger below it. Below the tiger are some
links to the library's operational information and a SUNY logo.
The center bottom has a Google logo/search box, with the text:
"Part of the code for counter
second part of the code for counter"
below it, with a small "counter.com" graphic below it and an affiliation
with a WebRing below that.
All of this, so far, with the exception of the quoted text just above,
looks pretty normal.
What doesn't look right is the top. There is a rectangular white box
with a scrollable list near the right side. The list seems to work okay;
but I suspect that some graphic element is missing.
Looking at the code, I see some sort of scrollable banner there that
doesn't appear in my browser; but I don't think that accounts for the
large white box. I also see links to bits of Flash animation, but as I
couldn't use Flash even if I wanted to (I'm running OpenBSD on Sparc),
I don't know what that does.
So my suggestions would be:
1. Rip out the window resize code (see below) and the rest of the Javascript.
The visitor count is probably interesting to you but not to anybody else.
The scrolling banner (the code looks like it continuously scrolls
horizontally) is annoying.
2. Rip out the Flash. My argument as to why would be aesthetic (it's not
needed on a library's home page), functional (if you are communicating
something important in there, I can't see it; if you're not communicating
something important, why is it on the home page?), and technical (Flash
isn't ubiquitous, files often take a long time to download, and as Jakob
Nielsen has pointed out, it's 99% bad).
3. Fix the HTML warnings emitted by HTML tidy or the HTML validation
service at the w3c (http://validator.w3.org).
4. See if problem has gone away. Lather, rinse, repeat. ;-)
> Secondly -- and this is merely my opinion -- that auto-maximize window
> script is incredibly obnoxious.
I concur. Luckily, I'm running Amaya and it ignored this. But if I'd
happened to be testing with another browser at the moment, I believe it
would have complied, and that would pretty much encourage me to never visit
the site again. Resize directives, along with the opening of additional
unrequested windows, pop-ups, pop-unders, disable forward/back controls,
etc. are all attempts at hostile takeovers of monitor real estate
and IMNSHO should be considered network abuse.
One more thing: I took a moment to fire up w3m. w3m is a lynx-like browser
that operates in text mode. I happen to like it because it's quite fast,
has a lot of nifty features, open-source, and easy to integrate with other
tools (like the mutt mail client). Anyway, I did this because looking
at a site with w3m (or lynx) is a good way to get some idea how your site
will look to a blind person. Below my signature is a snapshot of how
this page looks to w3m. Chunks of it are quite usable (the middle)
but it looks like Javascript code comments are leaking out, e.g. the
text "Part of code for counter second part of code for counter TC".
Similarly, some of the Flash-related stuff at the beginning appears
to be showing up.
---Rsk
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