[Sussex] A new look to our web site

[Steve Dobson]

Gareth (and everyone else)

On Fri, Jul 30, 2004 at 11:47:24AM +0100, Gareth Ablett wrote:
>  From: Steve Dobson [mailto:steve at dobson.org]
> > On Fri, Jul 30, 2004 at 11:11:45AM +0100, Gareth Ablett wrote:
> > > Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhhh  HTML 3.2 that's like
> > > ancient.
> > 
> > But that's the version of HTML I know - it's still supported - this
> > isn't M$ land you know :-)
> 
> Yes but we have to get recruits some where and I don't se them coming
> from macland.

I'm not saying that we shouldn't support the browsers.  I was just making
a dig at the point that in M$land you have to upgrade because the old
standards are not supported.  Now that the PC market is just about at
capacity M$ (or any company that has a monopoly in the OS market for a
platform) need to generated money with upgrades as there is little or
no growth in the replacement market.
 
> Sorry its just I'm used to coding in XHTML 1.1 that is also supported
> but lynx as long as you design it right.

I haven't got around to learning XHTML yet - It is on my ToDo list.
  
> > > Tbh if you don't mind me offending you the code is crap the site
> > > looks
> > > nice in mozilla though but IMHO the code needs some work. I looked
> > > at it
> > > In IE and although ie is crap it will display a properly coded page
> > > without a problem and it doesn't.
> > 
> > What's wrong with it?  I did a page similar to this (same techniques)
> > and I was told by Karl that it look fine.  If you send me (privately)
> > an image I'll see what I can do to fix it.  It's probably something
> > simple.  What config of IE are you using?  Screen size? etc...
> 
> Explorer version is 6.0.2800.1106IS
> Res is 1600x1280
> 
> I've attached some screens one in IE the second in firefox. The colour
> loss is just because of the png formatting.

The IE problem was due to poor support in IE for transparent PNGs.  I used
the scaling clear pixel cheat to position some of the textual components
and these were being rendered as white by IE.  I've replaced these with
a clear pixel GIF (Damn - I didn't want to use non F/OSS formats).  It
should render okay now.

The Firefox system was one of size.  All table columns expand if there is
is not enough text in the unlimited column to force the others to there
minimum (and required) widths.  I've added text to the presentation page
so it should now be okay.  Of course this will be a problem in the future
when 4094x2048 screens become available.
 
> > I see the menu system changing long term.  It we can get some real
> > content of the site it will have to change.  It will do for the
> > moment,
> > unless most would like a fixed menu on the left.
> 
> Btw do you grab the menu from one include file or do you have loads of
> pages you have to edit.

Both:  There are two fix parts that are in one of the scripts that get
called - the first set of menu items (like the HOME button) and the
last list of buttons (currently empty).  The other buttons for a page
are defined in HTML comments with in the page PHP file and are extracted
by a script when the page is rendered.
 
Steve