d wrote:

It depends what your target market is. The .gov.uk hierarchy is huge,
and is becoming increasingly CSSP based.

I assume by "templates" you mean some sort of CMS, rather than what is
in effect a blank document structure that you then type into.

There are only so many different ways to lay out a document that
contains set elements. Some of them are laid out completely
differently to others - even ignoring the graphics, colours and fonts.

If you don't think printers are mainstream, you are very much
mistaken. A very significant proportion of people will want to, at
various times, print web pages. Table-based pages tend to print very
badly. When even my dad has had to find a workaround to get them to
print properly (ie., print selection), it's a pretty clear indication
to me that the authors of those sites never gave any consideration to
what would happen when people pressed Ctrl+P.

Spacer gifs? They're hacks. Non-linear document structure? That's a
hack. You're just used to them.

--
Stevie D
\\\\\ ///// Bringing dating agencies to the
\\\\\\\__X__/////// common hedgehog since 2001 - "HedgeHugs"
___\\\\\\\'/ \'///////_____________________________________________

d wrote:

(which you should try telling to the DRC)

and...

You mean that if I hire you to create my site I won't be able to view it
on any browser? Fired! :-)

There's no such thing as a "site for mobile phones". If I'm on the train
and I want to check the contact details of the person I'm going to see,
or get some background on their company, then shouldn't I be able to do
that on my phone?

These arguments of yours are all red herrings. If you make your site
such that paragraphs are really paragraphs, headings are really headings
and lists are really lists etc then building a site to work on multiple
kinds of device isn't a problem. If you don't write your site like that
then you've just put up an obstacle in front of yourself - or is that
your business model, to do that and then charge extra for the some
complicated sniffing and extra versions of the same thing?

I'm not a purist in this, merely a pragmatist. If someone wants to use a
single table to layout a few columns and they do it right then who
cares? As Geoff has mentioned elsewhere it's all about things linearising.

However people who proceed to take someone's money for a job on the
pretext that they're not creating a site for blind people, or for
viewing on pdas or printing out, or in fact for viewing on anything
except a bog standard computer running a bog standard OS with a standard
screen size give the rest of us a bad name. I really hope you're not one
of those.

Cheers,

--
Richard Watson

d wrote:

I don't like the colour red. I want to ban people from wearing red
shirts or coats in my shop.
Good business decision?

People browsing the web on mobile phones are just as important as
those browsing on desktop computers. Unless you are writing a
deliberately arty site, excluding them arbitrarily is a bad idea.

--
Stevie D
\\\\\ ///// Bringing dating agencies to the
\\\\\\\__X__/////// common hedgehog since 2001 - "HedgeHugs"
___\\\\\\\'/ \'///////_____________________________________________

"Stevie D" <stevie@sjd117.freeserve.co.uk> wrote in message
news:r3rl121kkirv6vfr2602a4fgr7lsu0sk77@4ax.com...
Depends on how many people wearing red come into your shop.

They're not being excluded arbitrarily - they're using an unsupported device
to browse a site. Having layouts for every conceivable browser is not worth
the development time, considering you'll be lucky to get one visitor a month
using a mobile device to view the site, if that. If someone's not in your
demographic, going out of your way to target them is an exercise in
futility, surely...

"Alan J. Flavell" <flavell@physics.gla.ac.uk> wrote in message
news:Pine.LNX.4.62.0603171547010.22337@ppepc56.ph. gla.ac.uk...
That doesn't mean they have to be supported.

No, there are only a few people out there using textual browsers,
statistically speaking. That's irrefutable. Sure - the WWW can go on doing
what it wants, but I don't have to go out of my way and invest 30% of my
development time in supporting <1% of the market

fantastic.

"Richard Watson" <tinnedmeat@doilywood.org.uk> wrote in message
news:dvepf8$258$1@news.freedom2surf.net...
They know.

Seeing as not all sites can physically work on all hardware, expecting them
to do so is ridiculous I couldn't port my mp3-streaming website to a
mobile phone, or a textual browser, or a commodore 64 with a network card.

I don't work on that sort of site, so that's not an issue for me.

You're under the impression that sites are just for text, and the number of
people surfing not using Safari, IE, FF or Opera is massive. Clearly that's
not the case

No, it's all about sites working on the desired browsers. Nothing more,
nothing less. This isn't an exercise in ideology, but practicality.

Why does that give you a bad name? If you get a spec from a PM that says
"Make this site work on IE, firefox, safari and opera" why should you spend
hours of your time, that you can't bill for, creating multiple CSS files to
get it to work on every single device out there with a network connection?
That makes absolutely no sense. Bear in mind that a developer doesn't
decide what goes in to a website, or how it's used, or how it looks.
Developers develop.

cheers too

dave

"Stevie D" <stevie@sjd117.freeserve.co.uk> wrote in message
news:51nl12pn6t1u4u416pth8en772r22sver6@4ax.com...
Good for them Being public websites, they are mandated to be as
accessible as possible. Luckily, I work on private sites

Nope - I mean a template: data + template = html

They're all slight variations on a theme. The site is very simple, and
nothing too complicated is attempted.

If they want to print out a flash movie, then let them go for it.

They're not browser-specific hacks - that's my point. Shit, using the net
for anything other than military or academic use is a hack, surely :-P With
CSS you have to adopt hacks to get individual browsers to work. With
tables, every byte is intended for every browser - they all interpret it in
the same way, and render it as such. I don't need to use IE-only comments,
underscores or javascript to get tables working

"d" <d@example.com> writes:
When the work to make the device supported (if CSS is used for layout)
is zero, that seems fairly arbitrary, yes.

Well, yes, a site that doesn't work in mobile devices is unlikely to
get many visitors using a mobile device.

Who said anything about layouts, anyway? Put the content in the HTML
file in a logical order, let in linearise, and that's a sufficient
layout for any text browser (PC or mobile). It just happens that the
linearisation is safer, easier and more reliable using CSS rather than
table layouts.

--
Chris

On Fri, 17 Mar 2006 17:28:36 GMT, d put finger to keyboard and typed:

You can't not support a text browser - if there's nothing a text
browser can read, then you don't have an HTML document at all. You
can, of course, make the content entirely meaningless to a text
browser, but that seems a little pointless when it takes more effort
to do that than simply write normal HTML.

*Everyone* uses a text browser, every time they use a search engine.

Mark
--
Visit: http://names.orangehedgehog.com - British surname distribution profiles
Listen: http://www.goodge.co.uk/files/dweeb.mp3 - you'll love it!

Message-ID: <87r751lzcq.fsf@dinopsis.dur.ac.uk> from Chris Morris
contained the following:


But CSS ia a right royal pain in the arse to get right across a range of
browsers, especially when the most popular browser is broken.

This does not take zero time.
--
Geoff Berrow 0110001001101100010000000110
001101101011011001000110111101100111001011
100110001101101111001011100111010101101011