"Walter Bright" <newshound1@digitalmars.com> wrote in message news:hspj3m$1c9b$1@digitalmars.com...
>
> People often say it doesn't look professional. I agree it could probably use better colors, etc. But for this kind of web site, I think it's just wrong to use flash, javascript, or anything that takes a long time to load. I don't like pages that have a tiny bit of content surrounded by acres of flashy, blinky, hovering advertisements. I don't like websites that sacrifice readability in favor of a "look". I don't like web pages that refuse to reflow if the window size is changed. The site should print properly, and be mechanically convertible to a reasonably decent looking pdf.
>
> The site needs to be friendly to search engines, and usable by screen readers. Yes, there are blind programmers, and at least one blind D programmer. It's obnoxious to make a site they cannot use.
>
> I'm also old, and just don't like sites that use small fonts, cute fonts, blurry fonts, fonts with poor contrast, etc. They're hard, even painful, to read. When I was a kid writing letters to my aged relatives, my mom told me that they'd struggle to read typical handwriting, and that it's nice to use a typewriter instead. I always remembered that advice, and when I started using word processors for letters, the ones I'd send to them I'd always enlarge the font quite a bit. Web sites should avoid setting specific font sizes, so low vision users can enlarge it.
>

I agree a lot with most of this, but any web browser that doesn't scale so-called fixed-size fonts when zooming has a broken, archaic zoom function, period.


> I recently completed a revamp of the digitalmars site that got rid of the table based layout in favor of using floating CSS layout. The result looks a bit nicer, and the printing should be much better.
>

Speaking as a web developer, I've found that floating CSS is irritatingly gimped compared to tables when trying to adjust how things flow upon resizing. (Speaker as a web user, I've never cared one bit whether a site used floating CSS vs tables.)

Nick Sabalausky wrote:
>> I recently completed a revamp of the digitalmars site that got rid of the table based layout in favor of using floating CSS layout. The result looks a bit nicer, and the printing should be much better.
>>
> 
> Speaking as a web developer, I've found that floating CSS is irritatingly gimped compared to tables when trying to adjust how things flow upon resizing. (Speaker as a web user, I've never cared one bit whether a site used floating CSS vs tables.)

Doing them as floating CSS makes it possible to "nodisplay" the navigation sections when formatting for print.

The whole HTML/CSS design is such a horrific kludge it's a wonder it works at all.

"Walter Bright" <newshound1@digitalmars.com> wrote in message news:hsqhhg$fmq$1@digitalmars.com...
> Nick Sabalausky wrote:
>>> I recently completed a revamp of the digitalmars site that got rid of the table based layout in favor of using floating CSS layout. The result looks a bit nicer, and the printing should be much better.
>>>
>>
>> Speaking as a web developer, I've found that floating CSS is irritatingly gimped compared to tables when trying to adjust how things flow upon resizing. (Speaker as a web user, I've never cared one bit whether a site used floating CSS vs tables.)
>
> Doing them as floating CSS makes it possible to "nodisplay" the navigation sections when formatting for print.
>

Ahh, good point.

> The whole HTML/CSS design is such a horrific kludge it's a wonder it works at all.

That's exactly how I feel about 99% of internet "technologies" (including HTML/CSS, of course). And they're all horrific kludges *on top* of horrific kludges - I almost wish I never learned how ethernet, *ahem*..."works". It's a wonder I have any sanity left.

On 2010-05-16 21:47, Nick Sabalausky wrote:
> "Walter Bright"<newshound1@digitalmars.com>  wrote in message
> news:hsqhhg$fmq$1@digitalmars.com...
>> Nick Sabalausky wrote:
>>>> I recently completed a revamp of the digitalmars site that got rid of
>>>> the table based layout in favor of using floating CSS layout. The result
>>>> looks a bit nicer, and the printing should be much better.
>>>>
>>>
>>> Speaking as a web developer, I've found that floating CSS is irritatingly
>>> gimped compared to tables when trying to adjust how things flow upon
>>> resizing. (Speaker as a web user, I've never cared one bit whether a site
>>> used floating CSS vs tables.)
>>
>> Doing them as floating CSS makes it possible to "nodisplay" the navigation
>> sections when formatting for print.
>>
>
> Ahh, good point.
>
>> The whole HTML/CSS design is such a horrific kludge it's a wonder it works
>> at all.
>
> That's exactly how I feel about 99% of internet "technologies" (including
> HTML/CSS, of course). And they're all horrific kludges *on top* of horrific
> kludges - I almost wish I never learned how ethernet, *ahem*..."works". It's
> a wonder I have any sanity left.
>
>
>
There's this idea called "Worse is Better", which you've no doubt heard of... sometimes when I am feeling gloomy I agree with it wholeheartedly. ;-)

-- 
~ Due to cutbacks, the light at the end of the tunnel is temporarily out of service. ~ http://tagzilla.mozdev.org v0.066

linux user:
>Zip supports the executable flag but for some reason the compiler has negative attitude towards Linux users. Maybe it's supposed to boost the sales of the Windows port?<

The situation is different. It's for LLVM and GCC that Windows users look like third-class citizens. What you are seeing is just DMD being a bit more fair.

Bye,
bearophile

But it seems true that the Linux version of dmd has come after the Windows one... So the situation is not perfectly balanced.

Bye,
bearophile

On 5/16/10 22:04, Walter Bright wrote:
> Charles Hixson wrote:
>> On 05/15/2010 02:00 AM, Walter Bright wrote:
>>> The D web site is rather pedestrian, but at least it's easy on the eyes.
>>
>> *Pedestrian*??
>>
>> The D web pages are a marvel of clarity and utility. Compare them to
>> the Python web pages, which I rate a second best. Things are
>> documented with relative clarity, one can generally find what one
>> needs with a bit of searching, even if one doesn't know what it's
>> named. Etc.
>>
>> The D web site has only two minor (*minor*!) problems
>> One is the search engine which doesn't work on local copies.
>> The other is that one needs to disable google translation on local
>> copies, or everything loads too slowly.
>> (The first of those is probably impossible to deal with, but the
>> second looks trivial.)
>>
>> If by pedestrian you mean clean, clear, and easy to use, then give me
>> more pedestrian.
>
> People often say it doesn't look professional. I agree it could probably
> use better colors, etc. But for this kind of web site, I think it's just
> wrong to use flash, javascript, or anything that takes a long time to
> load. I don't like pages that have a tiny bit of content surrounded by
> acres of flashy, blinky, hovering advertisements. I don't like websites
> that sacrifice readability in favor of a "look". I don't like web pages
> that refuse to reflow if the window size is changed. The site should
> print properly, and be mechanically convertible to a reasonably decent
> looking pdf.
>
> The site needs to be friendly to search engines, and usable by screen
> readers. Yes, there are blind programmers, and at least one blind D
> programmer. It's obnoxious to make a site they cannot use.
>
> I'm also old, and just don't like sites that use small fonts, cute
> fonts, blurry fonts, fonts with poor contrast, etc. They're hard, even
> painful, to read. When I was a kid writing letters to my aged relatives,
> my mom told me that they'd struggle to read typical handwriting, and
> that it's nice to use a typewriter instead. I always remembered that
> advice, and when I started using word processors for letters, the ones
> I'd send to them I'd always enlarge the font quite a bit. Web sites
> should avoid setting specific font sizes, so low vision users can
> enlarge it.
>
> I recently completed a revamp of the digitalmars site that got rid of
> the table based layout in favor of using floating CSS layout. The result
> looks a bit nicer, and the printing should be much better.

About the font size, I like the font size that the D1 site uses better than the one that the D2 site uses.

>> My sole problem with D is one that's probably impossible to address:
>> the lack of libraries. When I need libraries, I usually end up using
>> some other language. But it sure isn't the web page.
>>
>> (DSource is marvelous, but most of the libraries listed appear to be
>> either moribund or morbid.)
>
> The library situation hopefully will get better over time.
>
> And thanks for the kind words about the site (!), it is nice to hear them.

On 17/05/10 15:16, linux user wrote:
> for some reason the compiler has negative attitude towards Linux
> Maybe it's supposed to boost the sales of the Windows port?

hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahah

*gasp*

hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaahahahahah


As bearophile says, the experience we get with DMD on Linux is by _far_ the best out of {Windows,Mac,Linux}.

Charles Hixson Wrote:

> The D web pages are a marvel of clarity and utility.  Compare them to the Python web pages, which I rate a second best.
OT:

The funny thing about the Python website, is that I never managed to find a direct link to the package repo (pypi) from the main site.

And yet if I google PyPI, and follow a link to pypi.python.org, a Package Index tab suddenly appears on the top left. If I click on another tab, it dissapears again. Needlessly inconsistent imo. (+ how are newbies supossed to find the libraries if they're not linked from the main site?)

On Mon, 17 May 2010 13:29:19 -0400, Andrej Mitrovic <andrej.mitrovich@gmail.com> wrote:

> Charles Hixson Wrote:
>
>> The D web pages are a marvel of clarity and utility.  Compare them to
>> the Python web pages, which I rate a second best.
> OT:
>
> The funny thing about the Python website, is that I never managed to find a direct link to the package repo (pypi) from the main site.
>
> And yet if I google PyPI, and follow a link to pypi.python.org, a Package Index tab suddenly appears on the top left. If I click on another tab, it dissapears again. Needlessly inconsistent imo. (+ how are newbies supossed to find the libraries if they're not linked from the main site?)

The D website's navigation bar suffers the same problems.

-Steve