New website (inspired by the "Website layout" thread)

[Amar Takhar]

On 2004-02-06 09:07 +0100, Jeroen Ruigrok wrote:

> >General HTML:
> >* The website is now backwards compatible to first generation browsers, while 
> >  some people see this as unimportant, I'd like to say a few things on this 
> >  subject:
> >	- A lot of people still use first generation browsers
> 
> Nobody who matters.  General available statistics on the Internet show
> that even version 4 browsers and lower are dropping below the 1%
> ballmark _combined_.  Not to mention that v4 and down have security
> holes too numerous to mention.

Yes, speed is also a huge issue, 'nobody who matters' is an avenue Microsoft
followed, look at the horrible mess they created.

If it's a technical site, be technical, nobody is comming to the site for the
latest music video, they're comming to the site for a technical reason.


> >	- Advanced CSS takes a while to compile (even on modern browsers)
> 
> Depends on the complexity of the CSS you create.
> 
> >	- It makes things look very broken for text-only browsers
> 
> Can't see anything that's broken.
> 
> >	- Advanced CSS is brutal for people using teleprompters for the blind
> 
> Not necessarily so.  Even normal HTML sites can be cumbersome for the
> disabled (you have left out large other groups).  CSS can still be used.
> Disability needs to be kept in mind for the entire design.
> 
> >	- This is a technical site, not http://www.disney.com
> >* The site looks far better in text-only browsers. (eg, w3m
> >www.dragonflybsd.org vs w3m dfly.ten15.org)
> 
> Viewing dragonflybsd.org in links and/or w3m doesn't show any problems
> for me and the site is easy to use.
> 
> >Search engine enhancements:
> >* added meta keywords
> >* added meta http-equiv content type
> >* any URLs ending in *.cgi are normally NOT indexed by search engines, 
> >  this is very bad, as they assume it is dynamic content -- while some 
> >  search engines are smart enough to figure this out, most are not.
> 
> Agreed.
> 
> >URLS:
> >* Lowercase is far better for the URLs, as this is a technical site, 
> >  most people will be typing in the locations by hand, thus uppercase is 
> >  annoying.
> 
> Agreed.
> 
> >Added features:
> >* CGI to handle error documents (found in /error, /cgi/error.cgi,
> >thanks petef!)
> 
> You can of course also use static pages for this, which would have made
> more sense given your stance towards static pages.  If you find the
> referring URL information useful I wonder how much it adds for a small
> website.

Of course you can, however using static pages does not give you the abilitity to
show the referring URL, which is why custome error pages are better.

The fact that they are not static is extremely trivial, most people will hit
pages that exist, vs pages that don't.


> >* Site map -- this is *VERY* important, to help those users who are not sure 
> >  what they are looking for, it allows you to link various areas of the site 
> >  using alternate names.
> 
> Depends on the size of your site, in my opinion.  The current site is
> hardly that big that people will get lost.

Start at the beginning and  it gets done, start later and you're adding 4,000
links


> >* Static pages are cool.
> 
> It has pros and cons.  Coolness factor is not relevant.
> 
> To sum it up: some parts coulds/should be changed, some others I would
> advise strongly against them.

You still havn't said WHY you can't use it, this entire email has been short
snippets of dis-agreeing.

Please give me some points, and examples of _why_ SGML does not work over
XML/XSLT.


Amar.