Browsers, browsers! Quo vadis?

There is a lovely site offering arguments regarding use of scripts to detect
which browser a visitor is using: http://www.quirksmode.org/js/support.html.

While reading the author's essay, it occurred to me that there was actually
a broader subject involved: Why should, or shouldn't, we design for the
lowest browser capability? Now please keep in mind that I do _not_ have a
solidly opinion formed regarding this yet but I would like to have one, a
valid one, if possible.

One point I've considered leads me away from the idea of designing for the
older or more obscure browser versions, since newer popular browsers are
free for the downloading. Therefore, the question becomes, "is the added
time and effort (translate to "expense") to develop universally compatible
pages justified?"

This may seem a moot discussion and perhaps I'm merely looking for
justification for a lazy man's way out, but I'm very interested in your
opinions about this.

Thanks,

El

"Faced with the choice between changing one's mind and proving that there is
no need to do so, almost everyone gets busy on the proof."
Galbraith's Law

Re: Browsers, browsers! Quo vadis?

On Fri, 11 May 2007 14:57:23 GMT El Kabong scribed:

> There is a lovely site offering arguments regarding use of scripts to
> detect which browser a visitor is using:
> http://www.quirksmode.org/js/support.html.
>
> While reading the author's essay, it occurred to me that there was
> actually a broader subject involved: Why should, or shouldn't, we
> design for the lowest browser capability? Now please keep in mind that
> I do _not_ have a solidly opinion formed regarding this yet but I
> would like to have one, a valid one, if possible.
>
> One point I've considered leads me away from the idea of designing for
> the older or more obscure browser versions, since newer popular
> browsers are free for the downloading. Therefore, the question
> becomes, "is the added time and effort (translate to "expense") to
> develop universally compatible pages justified?"
>
> This may seem a moot discussion and perhaps I'm merely looking for
> justification for a lazy man's way out, but I'm very interested in
> your opinions about this.

This has been discussed ad infinitum so perhaps you could edify yourself
more satisfactorily by Googling for past usenet fare on the subject.

--
Neredbojias
He who laughs last sounds like an idiot.

Re: Browsers, browsers! Quo vadis?

El Kabong wrote:

> One point I've considered leads me away from the idea of designing for the
> older or more obscure browser versions, since newer popular browsers are
> free for the downloading. Therefore, the question becomes, "is the added
> time and effort (translate to "expense") to develop universally compatible
> pages justified?"

Much depends on what you want to show to the rest of the internet, if you want
to make a "how to fix your microsoft installation after hard drive crash",
then the visitors would most likely be only MSIE users and you don't have to
care much about other browsers.

If you instead make a page, "how to take best care of your horse", you can't
anymore be sure on that your visitors will be using MSIE, it could even be the
minority browser. On a site like this you should be more aware of how it looks
in different browsers and should at least see to that it's useful in the major
browser families, khtml, gecko, opera and msie.

Most browsers handles HTML4 quite well, so if you get your code validated at
the w3c validator, you can assume it's usable by the major borwsers, it may
not look the same in all of them.

Things to avoid, if you want to make the site usable for as many people as
possible, is flash and jscript (microsofts version of javascript), as those
have a limited support when looking at CPU architecture and operating systems.
CSS, specially CSS2 is poorly supported in older browsers, so it could be good
to be sparse in the use of styles (but the number of people using older
browsers are limited, I wouldn't care too much about them).

I do have a number of different architectures on my own computers, and I use
GNU/Linux both at home and at work, when I do for the web is usually made in
mind to work as well on all my computers and working with wap is even more
difficult as the browsers in the phones has even larger variety on feature
support.


> This may seem a moot discussion and perhaps I'm merely looking for
> justification for a lazy man's way out, but I'm very interested in your
> opinions about this.

Of course it's all up to you what you want to support, but bad support can
lead to that your page to get less visited.


--

//Aho

Re: Browsers, browsers! Quo vadis?

"J.O. Aho" wrote in message
news:5ajn9gF2q005vU1@mid.individual.net...
> El Kabong wrote:
>
>> This may seem a moot discussion and perhaps I'm merely looking for
>> justification for a lazy man's way out, but I'm very interested in your
>> opinions about this.
>
> Of course it's all up to you what you want to support, but bad support can
> lead to that your page to get less visited.
>


Thanks J.O.

Well, maybe I thought someone would just give me a verbal slap on the head
and tell me "Yes, it must fly in all environments." or "Don't worry about
it... nobody else does."

The page with which I am currently concerned is
http://www.tomahawkfallride.com/CustomChopperShow2007.htm. It is supposed to
match exactly a flyer being physically distributed. It works OK in IE7 but
it falls down badly in FireFox. The pages validated nicely for HTML and CSS
so I'm a little confused by the failure in Mozilla. If I fix it for FireFox,
it's going to look like crap in IE7.

Is this something I should ignore or is there a solution?

Thanks again for your patience.

El

Re: Browsers, browsers! Quo vadis?

In article ,
"El Kabong" wrote:

> The page with which I am currently concerned is
> http://www.tomahawkfallride.com/CustomChopperShow2007.htm. It is supposed to
> match exactly a flyer being physically distributed. It works OK in IE7 but
> it falls down badly in FireFox.

And in Safari ... and doubtless other reasonably standard
compliant browsers. It is a typical example of using the wrong
type of tool to try to mimic a printed page, namely absolute
positioning instead of a PDF. The material is simple enough to
quite do without all the need for any positioning at all. It is
headings and paras and a couple of pics. Why would you not simply
go down the page with these and style the elements lightly to
suit the conveying of the information and text and background
colours and leave it at that?

--
dorayme

Re: Browsers, browsers! Quo vadis?

Thanks.

I'm not sure the site owner really needs it to match the flyer precisely. I
did upload it as a pdf,
(http://www.tomahawkfallride.com/CustomChopperShow2007.pdf) but it's nearly
a megabyte and we're pretty sure a lot of our target audience is not on
broadband.

So I'll give it a try tomorrow without the positioning.

El

"dorayme" wrote in message
news:doraymeRidThis-86DC74.08322712052007@news-vip.optusnet. com.au...
> In article ,
> "El Kabong" wrote:
>
>> The page with which I am currently concerned is
>> http://www.tomahawkfallride.com/CustomChopperShow2007.htm. It is supposed
>> to
>> match exactly a flyer being physically distributed. It works OK in IE7
>> but
>> it falls down badly in FireFox.
>
> And in Safari ... and doubtless other reasonably standard
> compliant browsers. It is a typical example of using the wrong
> type of tool to try to mimic a printed page, namely absolute
> positioning instead of a PDF. The material is simple enough to
> quite do without all the need for any positioning at all. It is
> headings and paras and a couple of pics. Why would you not simply
> go down the page with these and style the elements lightly to
> suit the conveying of the information and text and background
> colours and leave it at that?
>
> --
> dorayme

Re: Browsers, browsers! Quo vadis?

> El Kabong wrote:
> news: K4a1i.77$145.71@trnddc02
> I'm not sure the site owner really needs it to match the flyer
> precisely. I did upload it as a pdf,
> (http://www.tomahawkfallride.com/CustomChopperShow2007.pdf) but
> it's nearly a megabyte and we're pretty sure a lot of our target
> audience is not on broadband.

That pdf could be under 200kb, would that make life better?

--
BootNic Friday, May 11, 2007 11:42 PM

All men dream, but not equally. Those who dream by night in the dusty
recesses of their minds, wake in the day to find that it was vanity:
but the dreamers of the day are dangerous men, for they may act on
their dreams with open eyes, to make them possible.
*Thomas Edward Lawrence (of Arabia)*

Re: Browsers, browsers! Quo vadis?

El Kabong wrote:
> "J.O. Aho" wrote in message
> news:5ajn9gF2q005vU1@mid.individual.net...
>> El Kabong wrote:
>>
>>> This may seem a moot discussion and perhaps I'm merely looking for
>>> justification for a lazy man's way out, but I'm very interested in your
>>> opinions about this.
>> Of course it's all up to you what you want to support, but bad support can
>> lead to that your page to get less visited.
>>
>
>
> Thanks J.O.
>
> Well, maybe I thought someone would just give me a verbal slap on the head
> and tell me "Yes, it must fly in all environments." or "Don't worry about
> it... nobody else does."
>
> The page with which I am currently concerned is
> http://www.tomahawkfallride.com/CustomChopperShow2007.htm. It is supposed to
> match exactly a flyer being physically distributed. It works OK in IE7 but
> it falls down badly in FireFox. The pages validated nicely for HTML and CSS
> so I'm a little confused by the failure in Mozilla. If I fix it for FireFox,
> it's going to look like crap in IE7.

Skip absolute positions, it never works well if you want to support more than
one browser. If you want to get some ideas how to do things, take a look at
http://css.maxdesign.com.au/index.htm

Your page gets quite unusable if you has enlarged the fonts (120%), regardless
of browser.

--

//Aho

Re: Browsers, browsers! Quo vadis?

In article ,
"El Kabong" wrote:

> Thanks.
>
> I'm not sure the site owner really needs it to match the flyer precisely. I
> did upload it as a pdf,
> (http://www.tomahawkfallride.com/CustomChopperShow2007.pdf) but it's nearly
> a megabyte and we're pretty sure a lot of our target audience is not on
> broadband.
>
> So I'll give it a try tomorrow without the positioning.
>
> El
>
> "dorayme" wrote in message
> news:doraymeRidThis-86DC74.08322712052007@news-vip.optusnet. com.au...
> > In article ,
> > "El Kabong" wrote:
> >
> >> The page with which I am currently concerned is
> >> http://www.tomahawkfallride.com/CustomChopperShow2007.htm. It is supposed
> >> to
> >> match exactly a flyer being physically distributed. It works OK in IE7
> >> but
> >> it falls down badly in FireFox.
> >
> > And in Safari ... and doubtless other reasonably standard
> > compliant browsers. It is a typical example of using the wrong
> > type of tool to try to mimic a printed page, namely absolute
> > positioning instead of a PDF. The material is simple enough to
> > quite do without all the need for any positioning at all. It is
> > headings and paras and a couple of pics. Why would you not simply
> > go down the page with these and style the elements lightly to
> > suit the conveying of the information and text and background
> > colours and leave it at that?

Best not to top post. You could perhaps start with something as
simple as:

body {
background-color : white;
font-family: "Times New Roman", Helvetica, serif;
color: black;
margin: 0;
padding: 0;
}
#main {
padding: 10px;
margin-top: 5px;
margin-left: 5px;
margin-bottom: 5px;
max-width: 35em;
margin: auto
}

#ray {float: right;}


#heading {margin: 5px auto auto auto;}


h1 {

width: 100%;
height: 50px;
background: #000;

margin: auto;
text-align: center;
}


and then for HTML (just get rid of the white line in th heading
in an image editor)

Re: Browsers, browsers! Quo vadis?

BootNic wrote:
>> El Kabong wrote:
>> news: K4a1i.77$145.71@trnddc02
>> I'm not sure the site owner really needs it to match the flyer
>> precisely. I did upload it as a pdf,
>> (http://www.tomahawkfallride.com/CustomChopperShow2007.pdf) but it's
>> nearly a megabyte and we're pretty sure a lot of our target audience
>> is not on broadband.
>
> That pdf could be under 200kb, would that make life better?

Not for people who think PDF viewers are utterly tedious, such as me.

The OP would be better off creating a nice, semantic HTML page for the
content, and maybe offering the PDF leaflet as an optional download for
printing purposes.

Re: Browsers, browsers! Quo vadis?

In article <5al55pF2pibqgU1@mid.individual.net>,
JD wrote:

> > That pdf could be under 200kb, would that make life better?
>
> Not for people who think PDF viewers are utterly tedious, such as me.

The idea is that it would make life better for those whose
connections are slow and limited. How do you look at pdfs that
are presented on websites? It is tedious to open a reader, but
not _so_ tedious to see the PDF in the browser window itself.

--
dorayme

Re: Browsers, browsers! Quo vadis?

dorayme wrote:
> In article <5al55pF2pibqgU1@mid.individual.net>,
> JD wrote:
>
>>> That pdf could be under 200kb, would that make life better?
>> Not for people who think PDF viewers are utterly tedious, such as me.
>
> The idea is that it would make life better for those whose
> connections are slow and limited. How do you look at pdfs that
> are presented on websites? It is tedious to open a reader, but
> not _so_ tedious to see the PDF in the browser window itself.

PDF gets larger than the HTML+Images -> longer load times
PDF reader has to be started by the browser -> longer time before displayed
PDF reader has it's own toolbars -> Smaller display area

PDF is great if you want to print something, but IMHO poor substitute to a
HTML page.


--

//Aho

Re: Browsers, browsers! Quo vadis?

"dorayme" wrote in message
news:doraymeRidThis-FE37EF.14033912052007@news-vip.optusnet. com.au...

>
> and go on from here. You can simplify further, improve this too,
> but above is roughly if you insist on the pics to match the flyer.
>
> --
> dorayme

I really appreciate the work you put into your reply, but I also did not
want to merely copy your work and remain in the dark as to the "why's" and
"how's" of the styling. I will go back and review your suggestion to learn
some new stuff, for sure!

So I went back to my roots and placed objects _as_if_ they were in a table.

It works well in IE7 and FireFox but I have no idea about all the "brand x"
browsers. Guess I have to get busy downloading them but I only have a PC.
How does it look in Safari? Of course it loses its resemblance to the flyer
when the text size is changed in FireFox. (It doesn't change in IE7.)

Here's the link again:
http://www.tomahawkfallride.com/CustomChopperShow2007.htm

And Thanks again.

Re: Browsers, browsers! Quo vadis?

dorayme wrote:
> In article <5al55pF2pibqgU1@mid.individual.net>,
> JD wrote:
>
>>> That pdf could be under 200kb, would that make life better?
>> Not for people who think PDF viewers are utterly tedious, such as me.
>
> The idea is that it would make life better for those whose
> connections are slow and limited. How do you look at pdfs that
> are presented on websites? It is tedious to open a reader, but
> not _so_ tedious to see the PDF in the browser window itself.
>

I have to right-click and download. And I get quite irritated when folks
use PDF in place of HTML and I click on a link with not PDF warning,
and I don't notice the url in the status bar until after puzzle over why
I been watching a blank page and a throbber spinning for the last 5
minutes!

--
Take care,

Jonathan
-------------------
LITTLE WORKS STUDIO
http://www.LittleWorksStudio.com

Re: Browsers, browsers! Quo vadis?

El Kabong wrote:

> Here's the link again:
> http://www.tomahawkfallride.com/CustomChopperShow2007.htm

Well you could finish the job by:


1) Replace the:



with

"http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/strict.dtd">

2) Remove *ALL* the attributes CENTER, BORDER, HSPACE, VSPACE, ALIGN in
documents


3) Then give Ray's picture "RayKittel.jpg" the ID "ray" and add

#ray { float: right; margin: 0 0 .5em .5em; }

to your stylesheet

4) And for the RK Logo "RK_logo.jpg" add the ID "rk" and add

#rk { float: left; margin: 0 .5em .5em; 0 }


5) Remove the W3C logos because bikers don't give a rat's *** about the
W3C! ;-)

--
Take care,

Jonathan
-------------------
LITTLE WORKS STUDIO
http://www.LittleWorksStudio.com

Re: Browsers, browsers! Quo vadis?

Jonathan N. Little wrote:

> 5) Remove the W3C logos because bikers don't give a rat's *** about
> the W3C! ;-)

Ahem!

(but yes, remove the logos.)

--
-bts
-Motorcycles defy gravity; cars just suck

Re: Browsers, browsers! Quo vadis?

"Beauregard T. Shagnasty" wrote in message
news:Eik1i.11100$yM2.8739@bgtnsc04-news.ops.worldnet.att.net ...
> Jonathan N. Little wrote:
>
>> 5) Remove the W3C logos because bikers don't give a rat's *** about
>> the W3C! ;-)
>
> Ahem!
>
> (but yes, remove the logos.)
>
> --
> -bts
> -Motorcycles defy gravity; cars just suck

Guess I was just too proud of myself. They're going.

I'll work on the other stuff later, but can you tell me why changing the
DOCTYPE is a good idea? (I'm new to this "validation" stuff so I'm not being
facetious.)

El

Re: Browsers, browsers! Quo vadis?

El Kabong wrote:
>
> I'll work on the other stuff later, but can you tell me why changing the
> DOCTYPE is a good idea? (I'm new to this "validation" stuff so I'm not being
> facetious.)

See, e.g., http://hsivonen.iki.fi/doctype/ . The connection between
doctype and validation is different from (and secondary to) the
usefulness of avoiding quirks mode (by selecting a doctype).

--
John

Re: Browsers, browsers! Quo vadis?

In article <5al8taF2ot6bnU1@mid.individual.net>,
"J.O. Aho" wrote:

> dorayme wrote:
> > In article <5al55pF2pibqgU1@mid.individual.net>,
> > JD wrote:
> >
> >>> That pdf could be under 200kb, would that make life better?
> >> Not for people who think PDF viewers are utterly tedious, such as me.
> >
> > The idea is that it would make life better for those whose
> > connections are slow and limited. How do you look at pdfs that
> > are presented on websites? It is tedious to open a reader, but
> > not _so_ tedious to see the PDF in the browser window itself.
>
> PDF gets larger than the HTML+Images -> longer load times
> PDF reader has to be started by the browser -> longer time before displayed
> PDF reader has it's own toolbars -> Smaller display area
>
> PDF is great if you want to print something, but IMHO poor substitute to a
> HTML page.

All good points that are really besides the particular point that
a 200k pdf is better for a dial up user than a 1000k pdf.

Might as well here mention a qualification to your "poor
substitute" point. From the perspective of the person who has no
html/css skills and careful with dough, it is an excellent
substitute for many things (like newsletters). And I don't know
if you use something like Adobe Reader to kick in via a plugin
into the browser or what but on a Mac there is a rather
lightening fast alternative without the bloat.

--
dorayme

Re: Browsers, browsers! Quo vadis?

In article <42bfe$4645c339$40cba7a3$24089@NAXS.COM>,
"Jonathan N. Little" wrote:

> dorayme wrote:
> > In article <5al55pF2pibqgU1@mid.individual.net>,
> > JD wrote:
> >
> >>> That pdf could be under 200kb, would that make life better?
> >> Not for people who think PDF viewers are utterly tedious, such as me.
> >
> > The idea is that it would make life better for those whose
> > connections are slow and limited. How do you look at pdfs that
> > are presented on websites? It is tedious to open a reader, but
> > not _so_ tedious to see the PDF in the browser window itself.
> >
>
> I have to right-click and download. And I get quite irritated when folks
> use PDF in place of HTML and I click on a link with not PDF warning,
> and I don't notice the url in the status bar until after puzzle over why
> I been watching a blank page and a throbber spinning for the last 5
> minutes!
>

Jonathan, I share most of your irritations on this one. But they
are less than you might believe on a Mac with a certain tiny
plugin reader. Single click, quick show.

I have to say words that modify all criticisms of pdf's "on"
websites to justify my allowing some of my clients, (even
introducing them to the notion!), to do this. The alternative
would be work that they could not justify to pay for and, really,
simply would not. I would rather a client happy than frustrated,
me being the Christ in all of this. You see, I fancy the role. I
know, it is a sign of madness. I still like it.

--
dorayme

Re: Browsers, browsers! Quo vadis?

In article <4645e363$1_3@news.bluewin.ch>,
John Hosking wrote:

> El Kabong wrote:
> >
> > I'll work on the other stuff later, but can you tell me why changing the
> > DOCTYPE is a good idea? (I'm new to this "validation" stuff so I'm not
> > being
> > facetious.)
>
> See, e.g., http://hsivonen.iki.fi/doctype/ . The connection between
> doctype and validation is different from (and secondary to) the
> usefulness of avoiding quirks mode (by selecting a doctype).

And, may I say, El Kabong, you show some talent, certainly a firm
hand. Agree with all comments by others to date. You were asking
about the why of some code earlier. You will benefit from
approaching a page from the overall perspective of separating
style from content. In your HTML, try to lay it out in a logical
and meaningful manner with the thought that someone might just be
viewing it or hearing it with no styles, no colours. If it can be
useful in this situation, even though it is a less probable one,
you have achieved something significant. You have laid a
foundation for catering to all.

By crafting a stylesheet to make it look nice, fancy, whatever
you like, you then provide a further useful service to many if
not all people. It is also, in a more complicated case, a service
to yourself because you might later want to change the look
without having to pick over the html presentational bits and
pieces. This sort of thing comes into its own sitewise more than
pagewise. Small changes in a css sheet can have dramatic effects
on all the pages covered, whereas to achieve similar over a
number of pages otherwise means having to ferret out all the
styles scattered among all the different pages.

In this particular case you are constrained by using images that
function to display text. It is obvious why this is convenient
here. But ideally, you would replace even these and leave only
images that are simply either far too hard or impossible to
substitute with html text and css style. Ideally!

One advantage of using a strict doctype is that you are then
greatly encouraged to not use so much of the old presentational
html mark up like align="center". The idea of stict is that it is
a development of a higher standard whereas transitional is sort
of 'ok, you have old code and you want to improve, this will cut
you some slack".

Certainly not a good idea to ever display a W3C transitional
doctype congrats logo/link because though bikers will normally
not know about them, someone might give a rough translation and
you will be beaten to a pulp for being a wuss. With a strict
doctype, the translation will gain their respect and get you a
beer.

Then, of course, a severe beating for boasting with any logo.

--
dorayme

Re: Browsers, browsers! Quo vadis?

dorayme wrote:
> In article <42bfe$4645c339$40cba7a3$24089@NAXS.COM>,
> "Jonathan N. Little" wrote:

>> I have to right-click and download. And I get quite irritated when folks
>> use PDF in place of HTML and I click on a link with not PDF warning,
>> and I don't notice the url in the status bar until after puzzle over why
>> I been watching a blank page and a throbber spinning for the last 5
>> minutes!
>>
>
> Jonathan, I share most of your irritations on this one. But they
> are less than you might believe on a Mac with a certain tiny
> plugin reader. Single click, quick show.

I have the Adobe plugin, the time watching the throbber is due not to
loading the plugin but downloading the document which is *always* many
time larger than what can be done in HTML.

For example a club running a fundraiser had their announcement on their
site originally as a PDF at 332KB

http://www.littleworksstudio.com/temp/usenet/k2262.pdf
k2262.pdf (application/pdf Object 332KB)

I redid in HTML (plus a little improved styling IMO)

http://www.canadianscottishterrierclub.org/2007national.html

and it is only 52KB. Less than 1/6 the size, which on dialup is
significant.

I my mind the only use for PDF online is where precise printing of the
document is required and the link should be will identified that it
links to a PDF and should have the document size listed.


--
Take care,

Jonathan
-------------------
LITTLE WORKS STUDIO
http://www.LittleWorksStudio.com

Re: Browsers, browsers! Quo vadis?

> Jonathan N. Little wrote:
> news: e5fa8$464734b2$40cba7b1$29879@NAXS.COM
[snip]
> http://www.littleworksstudio.com/temp/usenet/k2262.pdf
> k2262.pdf (application/pdf Object 332KB)
>
> I redid in HTML (plus a little improved styling IMO)
>
> http://www.canadianscottishterrierclub.org/2007national.html
>
> and it is only 52KB. Less than 1/6 the size, which on dialup is
> significant.


The file size does not need be that great of differance.

64.2 KB (65,766 bytes)
[url]
http://home.earthlink.net/~bootnic/example.pdf
[/url]

--
BootNic Sunday, May 13, 2007 2:08 PM

A well-developed sense of humor is the pole that adds balance to your
step as you walk the tightrope of life
*William Arthur Ward*

Re: Browsers, browsers! Quo vadis?

In article
,
"BootNic" wrote:

> > Jonathan N. Little wrote:
> > news: e5fa8$464734b2$40cba7b1$29879@NAXS.COM
> [snip]
> > http://www.littleworksstudio.com/temp/usenet/k2262.pdf
> > k2262.pdf (application/pdf Object 332KB)
> >
> > I redid in HTML (plus a little improved styling IMO)
> >
> > http://www.canadianscottishterrierclub.org/2007national.html
> >
> > and it is only 52KB. Less than 1/6 the size, which on dialup is
> > significant.
>
>
> The file size does not need be that great of differance.
>
> 64.2 KB (65,766 bytes)
> [url]
> http://home.earthlink.net/~bootnic/example.pdf
> [/url]

Two things, Bootnic is right and pdfs can be prepared for the web
much smaller than they usually are. The skills needed for this (I
think export menu commands!) are less than the skills needed for
rendering the show in html. The other thing, it is not always
cost effective for a person or company to write or have things
written in HTML. Pity, true.

--
dorayme