Re: Personals Site - designer needed.

On Fri, 12 Aug 2005 00:15:42 GMT, MikesBrain <Mike@xxxx> looked at Ron
with an evil Grint in his eye and said :
>2005-08-11, Responding to Chris...

<snip>

>> For 99% of browsers the pages will be rendered correctly... and most
>> 'readers' can interpret Windows based sites quite well now. Much
>> better in fact that when I wrote my MSc Thesis on the topic 15 years
>> ago.

>In other words, you are using (consistantly defective and
>proprietry) M$ software as a "standard" instead of
>international w3c standards. Yes?

err... no.

<snip>

>> All GUI's by definition are graphical... people would usually want to
>> send in pictures of themselves and those pictures need to be in a
>> structure capable of displaying them to best advantage - which makes
>> Lynx hard to cater for. From what I've seen, it even has 'issues' with
>> frames (not that I'm considering using them <shudder>) but it seems
>> bizarre to attempt to rewrite and entire site to make it compatible
>> with a browser only the smallest of minorities would use?

>And amongst those "minorities" will be the visually impaired
>users you mentioned earlier? They will now be prevented from
>using whatever software they have available as you insist
>they should use M$ software? Things are not adding up
>here... (See comments further down the page...)

But... there are readers specifically written for use with GUI's that
are there for use by the visually impaired...

>> And I mean 'smallest'.... I just looked at the stats for
>> http://www.odps.org and despite the dictionary itself being almost
>> entirely graphics free... out of 25,000 visitors last month not one
>> attempted to access the site using Lynx.
>
>So what? Thats not my point.

Well not but it's part of mine... :)

>> Even the supporter pages e.g.
>> http://linuxreviews.org/news/2005/01/28_0001/ don't support the notion
>> that Lynx is 'popular' reporting a 0.53% 'market share' when looking
>> at its site - in fact it calls it 'rare' :)

>Again, so what? Lynx is installed by default on many Linux
>OSs and, if you check a few more resources, you'll see that
>it is more often used than this particular source indicates.

Yet they themselves called it 'rare'....

>Still not my point though...

>> Hence, I'm still not convinced the massive overhead to ensure
>> compliance with a 'rare' text browser would be worthwhile. Money is
>> *very* tight and I think the site might be better served with higher
>> bandwidth access and a feature rich interface than with full
>> compliance for Lynx.

>Oh dear! I'm NOT suggesting that you write your pages
>specifically "optimised" for Lynx users. I'm suggesting that
>if your pages won't render in a browser SUCH AS Lynx, then
>they are most likely NOT "standard" enough to be useful on
>anything but M$-type software, (which to date almost always
>FAILS to comply with internation standards itself,) and are
>more likely to FAIL as a resource for those with visual
>impairments, as I mentioned above.

My point is that if they render properly in the browsers that make up
99% of the user base then the site will be accessible for the vast
majority of users?

I appreciate what you're saying, but in round numbers how many people
have ever *heard* of Lynx, let alone used it?

>Lets see if I can make myself a little clearer...

>Write pages that comply with standards, and anything else
>that complies with those standards will operate with them
>(Think "the rest of the world" here).

>Write pages specifically (and exclusively) to work in one
>certain browser, and you begin your journey into "Best
>viewed in" land (along with "Click here" all over your
>pages). (Do a few searches on the terms. Its interesting!)

>When you use the so called "popular choice" as your
>standard, when that "popular choice" changes, your pages
>become problem ridden for your specified "audience" as a
>direct result.

>(What will you do if say Firefox becomes the "popular
>choice" next year and your "M$-compliant" pages fail in it,
>for instance?)

>Also, when writing pages as "M$ compliant", you add to the
>problem caused by M$ consistantly failing (IMO
>intentionally) to fully support existing standards that they
>themselves helped to create. (I'll let you figure out why
>they would do such a thing ok?)

>So...

>Stick to the standards everybody else works to, and you, and
>your readers, will at least only have "standard" problems to
>solve. Those who cannot use M$ Interest Exploiter (blind
>people for instance?) will also be able to render your pages
>in the most suitable way for them.

You're missing the point now... what I'm saying is that if 99% of
browser can access the pages with no problems, they perhaps it is the
1% (or in the case of Lynx 0.53% ) that aren't following the standards
appropriately??

>(You really need to read up a bit on WHY HTML was invented
>in the first place!)

Tim Berners Lee has been quite voluble on the subject over the years I
think :) and I still have one of the earlier copies of Mosaic
available, somewhere in my store of useless old software I can't bear
to throw away... along with 'treasures like 'Sidekick Plus' that only
became usable when it was obsolete <g>

>This has NOTHING to do with what browser you should or
>should not be writing for. (Even though as soon as you do
>that you begin to exclude possible readers). Why CREATE a
>problem that did not exist? (Outlook Express maybe? ;)

Oi.... I have some strange traits but I have *never* used Outlook
Express... its dire reputation swept all before it. Since 1996 I've
use a neat little emailer from Japan called Becky
(http://www.rimarts.co.jp/):)

>Your commitment to this course of action would seem to be
>based in a "good money after bad" route that you are already
>on. This could be the time to bite the bullet and get your
>pages up to standard. It could save you (and others) a whole
>lot more work later down the line. (And STILL work in IE!)

>http://validator.w3.org/

>...is your friend here. Trust me. ;\

>> Anyway... I'm off to get back to writing up the business plan. I'll
>> add full compliance as an 'aim' but can't see it being part of the
>> core at present. :)

>Er' hang on a min...

>Are you actually creating this site to make money?

If I was I'd be onto a real loser :) Nope... just hoping to provide a
service... it *will* be fee based but only in order to cover expenses.
Also of course charging even a small access fee will help keep 'time
wasters' and weirdo's out and keep the site up to date so users can
expect a response... nothing worse than mailing someone and finding
your mail vanishes forever in to the 'ether'.

>If so, I'll be sending you a consultation bill soon.

Heh :) I wish I could afford you.... though if you want to help set
the site up of course that could probably be sorted... ??

Seriously tho, the idea of the business plan is to try to keep it on a
quasi-professional level so that once the decision is reached about
exactly where the destination will be, we can work out what steps need
to be taken in order to reach it effectively.

So far I have a start point and an end point... hence 'reading the
maps' :)
--
Skyrider

Visit Australian Opinion...where comment counts!
http://www.australianopinion.com
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