Re: [PLUG] PLUG Website Maintenence

[Jason <jason@nocks.com>]

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On Thursday 10 October 2002 10H:21, gabriel rosenkoetter wrote:
<lengthy snippage>

Oh, what a long, strange thread it's been... Just caught up with it earlier 
today. I'll try to toss in my $.02 without heating things up further.

I tend to agree with most of gabriel's points in this thread. And, I do use 
graphical web-browsers most of the time. Generally, Konqueror or Mozilla. 
I've had to use IE and Netscape many times in the past as well. However, 
there are occasions where I'm working remotely and still want to browse the 
web just for a piece of information, and I do rely on text-only utilities 
like Lynx. So, it may not be the tool I use all of the time, but I hate 
running into sites that were not designed with accessibility in mind when I 
do use it.

Also, I have a PDA that very few other people have (Rex 6000) that is supposed 
to sync w/ the web. If I get that feature working, it will likely be with 
help from other open source developers and will be largely text-based. The 
Plug website would certainly be one of the websites of interest to me if I 
did get this working.

A couple of points here:
1) Very glad to see some interest in working on the website. I hope the 
lengthy discussion doesn't spoil your enthusiasm.

2) I have not seen a reference to the "Viewable with Any Browser" campaign. 
Check it out at:
http://www.anybrowser.org/campaign/
If someone else already mentioned it, sorry for the repost.

I believe this campaign has been going on for at least 6-7 years, and is still 
quite important, particularly in the light of this thread. The main point is 
that web pages should be designed with accessibility in mind, not targeting 
specific browsers. We are trying to get away from the days when you needed to 
be running one or two specific applications to get access to the information 
you are seeking out. The GNU/Linux/BSD community is generally particularly 
sensitive to this point.

3) I have seen a "what's wrong with browser detects" type of question posted. 
1st, go check out the "Viewable with Any Browser" campaign mentioned above. 
This question is addressed in detail.  2nd, what would be the definitive list 
of browsers? Would you include utilities like LWP, web-archiving utilities, 
etc.?

What about tools that haven't been created yet? What if I worked on a new 
utility tomorrow (see my PDA above)? If I did so, I'd try to stick to the W3C 
standards as much as possible. Shouldn't the pages do the same? It's almost 
impossible to try to put together a list and target every possible different 
type and version of browser individually. You end up falling back to needing 
at least one version that works for _most browsers_ that *can't be 
anticipated*.

The work spent tailoring a page or entire site to look at its best with just a 
couple of browsers' extensions is largely wasted effort. If that is what's 
desired, you are better off creating a PDF document. You can create a much 
more controlled look-and-feel, layout, etc. Instead, just make the version 
that works for _most browsers_ the *only version* and make it work for _all 
browsers_. That doesn't mean it can't have a clean, well-organized, and 
attractive design. As others have said, HTML is intended to allow designing 
pages for a broad range of platforms, and standard-compliant HTML should 
degrade gracefully. Most newer standards-compliant look-and-feel development 
is done with CSS. Again, limit this where it's not really necessary.

The content comes first. Then comes organizing the content. The last, but 
still important point, is attractive look and feel. Just don't make the last 
priority get in the way of the first two.

4) Also, there was a previous post from "multiple seriousity" that offered a 
number of good points to keep in mind for web design. There were some good 
points in there, some of which haven't been mentioned recently. In 
particular, I think it's important to try to establish URLs over time (finer 
granularity than just phillylinux.org) that remain around while the content 
may change.

For example, http://www.PhillyLinux.org/meetings.html should probably always 
be a valid URL that will bring up the current list of meetings, etc. That 
doesn't mean you need to preserve the old design of that page after a 
redesign, but rather all reasonable efforts should be made to make sure that 
the URL is always valid and current.

5) Size and speed of graphics has been implied. Again, accessibility is 
important. Not everyone has DSL/cable modems/satellite/etc. Not everyone has 
a T-1 in their basement. Graphics should not be large. The site should load 
quickly, even over slower connections. Graphics should not get in the way of 
getting at the content. That doesn't mean they can't exist, just don't go 
overboard with them.

Cheers,
Jason Nocks
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