[Gllug] [OT]Reforming wayward web designers

[Garry Heaton]

Daniel P. Berrange wrote:
>And it also has handy autocompletion stuff for CSS too, unfortunately
>(AFAIK) the MX 2004 version doesn't run under WINE.

>One strategy I've used in the past is to show someone their web page in
>Lynx and say "This is what a search engine sees when it looks at your
>page", which is good for motivating marketing types at least.  I'd also
>second someone's earlier suggestion for Zeldman's designing with web
>standards, a nice practical guide.  For wow factor Eric Meyer's css/edge
>site is pretty (http://www.meyerweb.com/eric/css/edge/) or you could try
>him on either of his 'Eric Meyer on CSS' books.

>Alternatively you could subscribe him to css-d and then post a site
>check request for his CV page... :)

>Rob

It's easy to forget that the likes of Zeldman and Meyer have been at it for
years perfecting their art and still admit that getting it right is a royal
PITA. Witness the many redesigns their sites have been through. Your average
web developer, doing PHP/Perl backend stuff with a database, has only a
limited amount of time to get the front end right and isn't going to be able
to follow all the CSS/web standards/accessibility to the letter. Getting
complex CSS layouts working consistently, for me, involved a considerable
outlay on hardware to start with:

- Windows XP + Virtual PC for testing:
  - IE6
  - IE5.5
  - IE5.0
  - IE4
  - Opera 7.5
  - Mozilla 1.7
  - Netscape 4.75

- MacOS X for testing:
  - Safari 1.2
  - IE 5.2
  - IE 5.1 (under Classic)
  - IE 4 (under Classic)
  - Mozilla 1.7

- Linux for PHP/Perl/database work and testing:
  - Lynx
  - Mozilla 1.7
  - Konqueror

If you stick to <table>s you won't need to check half of this. <table>s
"just work" but with CSS you're in for some big suprises/sleepless nights if
you've coded a large client site with all kinds of Tantek/midpass trickery
and haven't checked all the platforms. CSS is STILL a nightmare to work with
if you're doing anything more than very simple layouts. Since many web
designers don't test on multiple platforms it's easy for them to remain
unaware of all this. Heck, I know of many web "designers" who produce nice,
shiny CSS designs to drool over ..... on their nice, shiny new Macs and
because designers tend to be Mac types the site is never tested on anything
other than the latest releases of Safari and IE5/Mac. Some even think that
testing on IE5/Mac saves them from testing on Windows altogether!

Spare newbies the pain of perfecting CSS at this stage in browser history
and have them settle for a hybrid of CSS and <table>s.

Garry






Garry










-- 
Gllug mailing list  -  Gllug at gllug.org.uk
http://lists.gllug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/gllug