[Gllug] RE: Gllug Digest, Vol 9, Issue 14

Thu Mar 4 21:21:18 UTC 2004

Hi I have missed most of this post, one of my designers has great skill at
getting a single CSS file to work across all browsers, not sure if this is
what you are after, let me know we maybe able to help.

James

-----Original Message-----
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Behalf Of gllug-request at gllug.org.uk
Sent: 04 March 2004 20:48
To: gllug at gllug.org.uk
Subject: Gllug Digest, Vol 9, Issue 14

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Today's Topics:

   1. Re: Website designer who doesn't suck  (Tethys)
   2. Re: Website designer who doesn't suck (Richard Jones)
   3. Re: Website designer who doesn't suck (Daniel P. Berrange)
   4. Re: Website designer who doesn't suck (Richard Jones)
   5. Re: Website designer who doesn't suck (Daniel P. Berrange)
   6. Re: Website designer who doesn't suck (Martin A. Brooks)
   7. Re: Website designer who doesn't suck (Andre Newman)
   8. Re: Reporting Tools (Mike Brodbelt)
   9. Re: Reporting Tools (Mamading Ceesay)
  10. Re: HTML Mail (Mike Brodbelt)

----------------------------------------------------------------------

Message: 1
Date: Thu, 04 Mar 2004 18:07:21 +0000
From: Tethys <tet at createservices.com>
Subject: Re: [Gllug] Website designer who doesn't suck 
To: Greater London Linux Users Group <gllug at gllug.org.uk>
Message-ID: <200403041807.i24I7MtW023553 at isengard.accucard.com>

Richard Jones writes:

>... if I could find it beneath the javascript Mystery Meat Navigation.
>
>This is what the site looks like in Lynx (hence to blind users):

Indeed. Looking at it in mozilla, the fact that it does browser sniffing
and redirects me to an "ns5" specific page shows the he *doesn't* get
what you're asking for. If you're having to write spearate pages for
different browsers, then you really need a smack round the head with
a cluestick...

Tet

------------------------------

Message: 2
Date: Thu, 4 Mar 2004 18:33:06 +0000
From: Richard Jones <rich at annexia.org>
Subject: Re: [Gllug] Website designer who doesn't suck
To: Greater London Linux Users Group <gllug at gllug.org.uk>
Message-ID: <20040304183306.GA24249 at redhat.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii

On Thu, Mar 04, 2004 at 06:07:21PM +0000, Tethys wrote:
> Indeed. Looking at it in mozilla, the fact that it does browser sniffing
> and redirects me to an "ns5" specific page shows the he *doesn't* get
> what you're asking for. If you're having to write spearate pages for
> different browsers, then you really need a smack round the head with
> a cluestick...

True enough ...  having said that we do sometimes serve up different
CSS pages to cope with IE's CSS bugs.  eg. http://www.merjis.com [see
why we need a web designer?] has IE-specific CSS and everything-else-
specific CSS.  You won't be able to see this because I think it's all
done using server-side browser sniffing.  On other websites we've done
which are less CSS-intensive we've used a single stylesheet.  eg.
http://www.j-london.com/ has a single common stylesheet.  It has some
bugs related to IE, but not enough that we needed to serve up a
separate stylesheet for this.

We're looking for someone who really understands:

* Using semantic markup, and adding styling over that just using CSS
(try looking at the markup structure of http://www.execellence.com/).

* Bringing the content of the page up to the top so that Google can
find it.  (Do a View->Source on http://www.j-london.com/ and note that
the content appears in the HTML well before the navigation).

* URL structure (http://www.j-london.com/ has very well-defined URLs
which are rewritten using server-side includes and mod_rewrite onto
the actual implementation scripts).  We *want* people to be able to
bookmark and deep link to our pages.

In our experience, very very few web designers in the UK really
understand these issues or why they're important.  We're looking for
one of them.

Rich.

-- 
Richard Jones. http://www.annexia.org/ http://www.j-london.com/
Merjis Ltd. http://www.merjis.com/ - improving website return on investment
If I have not seen as far as others, it is because I have been
standing in the footprints of giants.  -- from Usenet

------------------------------

Message: 3
Date: Thu, 4 Mar 2004 18:39:29 +0000
From: "Daniel P. Berrange" <dan at berrange.com>
Subject: Re: [Gllug] Website designer who doesn't suck
To: Greater London Linux Users Group <gllug at gllug.org.uk>
Message-ID: <20040304183929.GC24191 at berrange.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

On Thu, Mar 04, 2004 at 06:33:06PM +0000, Richard Jones wrote:
> True enough ...  having said that we do sometimes serve up different
> CSS pages to cope with IE's CSS bugs.  eg. http://www.merjis.com [see
> why we need a web designer?] has IE-specific CSS and everything-else-
> specific CSS.  You won't be able to see this because I think it's all
> done using server-side browser sniffing.  On other websites we've done
> which are less CSS-intensive we've used a single stylesheet.  eg.
> http://www.j-london.com/ has a single common stylesheet.  It has some
> bugs related to IE, but not enough that we needed to serve up a
> separate stylesheet for this.

As a point of interest, its actually possible to write browser
specific rules without needing to do CSS negotiation on the 
server. The trick involves exploiting bugs in various browser
CSS parsers. The following page shows a matrix for identifying
which bugs you need to exploit for a given circumstance!

  http://centricle.com/ref/css/filters/

Dan.
-- 
|=-               http://www.berrange.com/~dan/gpgkey.txt             -=|
|=-   berrange at redhat.com  -  Daniel Berrange  -  dan at berrange.com    -=|
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Message: 4
Date: Thu, 4 Mar 2004 18:43:58 +0000
From: Richard Jones <rich at annexia.org>
Subject: Re: [Gllug] Website designer who doesn't suck
To: Greater London Linux Users Group <gllug at gllug.org.uk>
Message-ID: <20040304184358.GA25930 at redhat.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

On Thu, Mar 04, 2004 at 06:39:29PM +0000, Daniel P. Berrange wrote:
> As a point of interest, its actually possible to write browser
> specific rules without needing to do CSS negotiation on the 
> server. The trick involves exploiting bugs in various browser
> CSS parsers. The following page shows a matrix for identifying
> which bugs you need to exploit for a given circumstance!
> 
>   http://centricle.com/ref/css/filters/

I know ... I just think this is kind of hacky.  Server-side browser
sniffing for the CSS page is easy enough to do.

Ideally of course I'd ditch IE compatibility altogether until such
time as they decide to implement even a small subset of CSS properly,
but unfortunately that's not a realistic option.

Rich.

-- 
Richard Jones. http://www.annexia.org/ http://www.j-london.com/
Merjis Ltd. http://www.merjis.com/ - improving website return on investment
http://www.YouUnlimited.co.uk/ - management courses
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Message: 5
Date: Thu, 4 Mar 2004 18:49:11 +0000
From: "Daniel P. Berrange" <dan at berrange.com>
Subject: Re: [Gllug] Website designer who doesn't suck
To: Greater London Linux Users Group <gllug at gllug.org.uk>
Message-ID: <20040304184910.GD24191 at berrange.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"

On Thu, Mar 04, 2004 at 06:43:58PM +0000, Richard Jones wrote:
> On Thu, Mar 04, 2004 at 06:39:29PM +0000, Daniel P. Berrange wrote:
> > As a point of interest, its actually possible to write browser
> > specific rules without needing to do CSS negotiation on the 
> > server. The trick involves exploiting bugs in various browser
> > CSS parsers. The following page shows a matrix for identifying
> > which bugs you need to exploit for a given circumstance!
> > 
> >   http://centricle.com/ref/css/filters/
> 
> I know ... I just think this is kind of hacky.  Server-side browser
> sniffing for the CSS page is easy enough to do.

Unfortunately server side sniffing is not immune to people 
faking their user agent identifier.

Dan.
-- 
|=-               http://www.berrange.com/~dan/gpgkey.txt             -=|
|=-   berrange at redhat.com  -  Daniel Berrange  -  dan at berrange.com    -=|
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Message: 6
Date: Thu, 04 Mar 2004 19:41:44 +0000
From: "Martin A. Brooks" <martin at clues.ltd.uk>
Subject: Re: [Gllug] Website designer who doesn't suck
To: Greater London Linux Users Group <gllug at gllug.org.uk>
Message-ID: <6.0.3.0.0.20040304194007.02a01098 at postel.clues.ltd.uk>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"; format=flowed

At 16:56 04/03/2004, you wrote:
>I'm sure that people on GLLUG have built / had websites built for
>them, so can you recommend anyone for us?  Preferably London based,
>and available for contract work.

Not London based, but I can heartily recommend the lady who designed our 
web site for us.  I've also worked with her pre-Clues on a number of
projects.

http://www.madharper.com/

Martin A. Brooks, Clues Ltd.
http://www.clues.ltd.uk/

------------------------------

Message: 7
Date: Thu, 4 Mar 2004 20:04:12 -0000 (GMT)
From: "Andre Newman" <gllug at dinkum.org.uk>
Subject: Re: [Gllug] Website designer who doesn't suck
To: "Greater London Linux Users Group" <gllug at gllug.org.uk>
Message-ID:
	<52253.80.176.135.7.1078430652.squirrel at fair.dinkum.org.uk>
Content-Type: text/plain;charset=iso-8859-1

> Dear GLLUGers:
>
> We're trying to find a knowledgeable contract web designer, with an

A friend of mine might be the sort of guy you want, he's strict about
accessibility and simple clean design. Not sure about standards compliance
but he gets the whole hand tuned html thing.

He's on john at roundel.net

A couple of his sites are:
http://www.changename.co.uk/
http://www.cupidcupid.co.uk/

Andre

------------------------------

Message: 8
Date: Thu, 04 Mar 2004 20:30:46 +0000
From: Mike Brodbelt <mike at coruscant.demon.co.uk>
Subject: Re: [Gllug] Reporting Tools
To: Greater London Linux Users Group <gllug at gllug.org.uk>
Message-ID: <1078432245.850.1.camel at mordor.altair.nexus>
Content-Type: text/plain

On Thu, 2004-03-04 at 13:13, Mamading Ceesay wrote:
> On Wed, 03 Mar 2004 19:53:51 +0000
> Mike Brodbelt wrote:
> 
> > 
> > Are there any good alternatives to Crystal Reports? I'd kill for an
> > open source cross platform reporting tool that integrates well with
> > Windows and non-Windows platforms, provides an interface that
> > non-techies can design reports in, and replicates the functionality of
> > Crystal. I've yet to see a credible free software alternative...
> > 
> 
> Haven't tried it, but you might want to look at Datavision (which is
> Java-based). 
> 
> http://datavision.sourceforge.net/

I've tried it. It's not even close to being a viable replacement for
Crystal, sadly. 

> At the bottom of the home page for DataVision, there is a list of other
> reporting tools.

Yes - I've tried a few, but not all of them. I'll get to the others in
due course....

Mike.

------------------------------

Message: 9
Date: Thu, 4 Mar 2004 20:39:57 +0000
From: Mamading Ceesay <linux at evangineer.force9.co.uk>
Subject: Re: [Gllug] Reporting Tools
To: Greater London Linux Users Group <gllug at gllug.org.uk>
Message-ID: <20040304203957.32014778 at sothis.evangineer>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII

On Thu, 04 Mar 2004 20:30:46 +0000
Mike Brodbelt wrote:

> 
> Yes - I've tried a few, but not all of them. I'll get to the others in
> due course....
> 

I'd be interested in finding out your views on which are the most viable
tools, even if they don't currently compare to Crystal.

Is this for your own use, for the use of developers or non-technical
users?

-- 
Mamading Ceesay - SCO delenda est! - http://www.scocountdown.com
Essential reading for all computer users: 
http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/%7Erja14/tcpa-faq.htm
http://www.fipr.org/intellectual.html

------------------------------

Message: 10
Date: Thu, 04 Mar 2004 20:47:32 +0000
From: Mike Brodbelt <mike at coruscant.demon.co.uk>
Subject: Re: [Gllug] HTML Mail
To: "Daniel P. Berrange" <dan at berrange.com>,	Greater London Linux
	Users Group <gllug at gllug.org.uk>
Message-ID: <1078433251.850.4.camel at mordor.altair.nexus>
Content-Type: text/plain

On Thu, 2004-03-04 at 10:44, Daniel P. Berrange wrote:

> Nah, the Curzon website beats that:
> 
> http://www.curzoncinemas.com/
> 
> Notice tiny 300x200 square constantly scrolling information
> up the screen,

<snip>

At least it works. The Odeon one is *totally* non-functional in Mozilla
and Opera - it works only in some versions of IE, and NS4.

Mike.

------------------------------

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