[LINK] After 10 years, standards are still loosely-defined

[Howard Lowndes]

On Thu, 2004-08-12 at 11:53, Ivan Trundle wrote:
> But whilst I too love the elegant simplicity, what happens when one user
> says 'scroll down to the bottom of the brown right-hand column and
> choose the brown link, 'Translations' to someone who isn't using the
> style sheet? Or '...look below the pagoda'?
> 
> Considering that there are many of us who have to guide (remote) users
> through a website, this is too clever by half (even though I like it a
> lot, and use CSS on my own sites). Bells and whistles exist in CSS, too.
> (yes, yes, ... albeit standards-compliant, offering graceful
> degradation, etc)

I think Rick's point was that you can do elegant things with CSS, not
that you can offer many CSS options to end users and hence confuse the
issue as you appear to have read him.

> 
> I reiterate that IMHO the user experience should be as uniform as
> possible, especially when visitors are using comparable tools.
> 
> --
> Ivan Trundle
> Manager, communications and publishing
> Australian Library and Information Association
> PO Box 6335 Kingston 2604 Australia
> ph +61 2 6215 8232 fx +61 2 6282 2249
> ivan.trundle at alia.org.au http://alia.org.au
> 
> >>> Rick Welykochy <rick at praxis.com.au> - 12/8/04 4:42 AM >>>
> I once wrote:
> 
>  > Those in this industry can well guess how many good $$$ are thrown
> at junk
>  > projects like this. The more's the pity, since sticking to
> interoperable
>  > standards would have made the site "just plain work" and garnered
> more business
>  > for these poeple.
> 
> 
> I just ran across this little Zen of CSS beauty. It is a very simple
> demonstration
> of how a very good looking web page is possible without any Javascript,
> plug-ins,
> tricks, bells or whistles, simply with a judicious use of CSS. The HTML
> is standards
> compliant in this example, without resorting to any tricks.
> 
> First, look at the plain old HTML here:
> 
>     <http://www.csszengarden.com/zengarden-sample.html>
> 
> Then look at the CSS version, here:
> 
>     <http://www.csszengarden.com/>
> 
> The transformation is accomplished by a style sheet
> 
>     <http://www.csszengarden.com/zengarden-sample.css>
> 
> and the following incantation in the HTML:
> 
> 	 <!-- <DEFANGED_STYLE type="text/css" media="all">
> 		@import "sample.css";
> 	 --> </DEFANGED_STYLE>
> 
> This really ain't hard. I really do wonder what they are teaching in
> school
> these w.r.t. web markup. It certainly ain't this stuff :-(
> 
> The site and its example are well named: there is a Zen quality to the
> simplicity
> and beauty of the solution. Form meets substance without conflict.
> 
> 
> cheers
> rickw
-- 
Howard.
LANNet Computing Associates;
Your Linux people <http://www.lannetlinux.com>
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