On 04/10/10 19:42, Walter Bright wrote:
> Stewart Gordon wrote:
>> The layout breaks in anything but the default text zoom.
>
> The annoying thing about this is everyone says "don't use tables for
> layout, use CSS." Except that using CSS for layout DOESN'T WORK
> RELIABLY. With tables, I can get 3 columns that are actually 3 columns,
> not 3 columns that are a side effect of bugs in CSS.

You shouldn't use tables for layout. There's nothing wrong with using tables for tabular data though... This said, I can't make my mind up whether the data seen there is tabular ;) I think most would argue not though.

As for CSS, it works perfectly reliably, once you know how to use it... Getting a 3 column layout or anything more exciting than content, menu, sidebar is a pain unless you're more experienced with CSS, takes a while to learn the tricks for it. Then, unless you're a web developer, you forget how to do it next time you need to :3

-- 
Robert
http://octarineparrot.com/

"BCS" <none@anon.com> wrote in message news:a6268ff1d6c58cd31a68901b792@news.digitalmars.com...
> Hello Nick,
>
>> "BCS" <none@anon.com> wrote in message news:a6268ff1d6668cd315bbe9b6d30@news.digitalmars.com...
>>
>>> are you in china?
>>>
>> Unless
>> the browser is stupid enough to actually try to load external scripts
>> when JS is off...
>
> 1) You are assuming some third party isn't an idiot. I wouldn't usually bet on that one.

Good point.

> 2) there could be some sort of CSS/img/etc. component to it that doesn't get ignored.
>

I checked the page source. Outside of actual JS code, the only reference to anything at twitter is one external JS file reference. And there's no external CSS files referenced.

> Point being that the whole web is so stinking complicated the only way to tell what the effects of blocking something are is to block it and see.
>

Fortunately Walter's pages and nice and simple :)

You're probably right that I can't be 100% certain. But I'm fairly certain about it, at least aside from the question of browsers possibly loading JS files when JS is off. And regarding that:

I've just done a little test in FF2: I have JS turned off via NoScript, I cleared the cache, and used the HttpFox extension to inspect the browser's HTTP behavior while loading http://www.digitalmars.com. These are the only URLs it reported the browser loading:

http://www.digitalmars.com http://www.digitalmars.com/dmlogo.gif http://www.digitalmars.com/download.png http://www.digitalmars.com/library.png http://www.digitalmars.com/news.png http://www.digitalmars.com/buy.png

So at least in FF2 with JS disabled via NoScript, twitter doesn't get referenced by the client. Or at least if HttpFox is to be trusted, but I've never had a problem with it.

On 2010-10-04 14:42:22 -0400, Walter Bright <newshound2@digitalmars.com> said:

> Stewart Gordon wrote:
>> The layout breaks in anything but the default text zoom.
> 
> The annoying thing about this is everyone says "don't use tables for layout, use CSS." Except that using CSS for layout DOESN'T WORK RELIABLY. With tables, I can get 3 columns that are actually 3 columns, not 3 columns that are a side effect of bugs in CSS.

Very true. CSS is great, except when you want columns, especially more than 2 columns with where columns have a background that must end at the same height.

That said, you could play with `display: table`. But the basic problem with `display: table` (like many "advanced" things in CSS) is that it won't work much with IE less than 8. Can you believe it took so long for Microsoft to implement this important part of a specification from 2009 (CSS 2.1)? This is really the problem with the web: the dominant browser stopped evolving during a long period and is only now beginning to catch up. So now we're navigating in a sea of workarounds because everyone needs columns and other things that need a hack to work in IE.

Let's hope it gets better in the coming years as older versions of IE become obsolete.


-- 
Michel Fortin
michel.fortin@michelf.com
http://michelf.com/

Robert Clipsham wrote:
> As for CSS, it works perfectly reliably, once you know how to use it... Getting a 3 column layout or anything more exciting than content, menu, sidebar is a pain unless you're more experienced with CSS, takes a while to learn the tricks for it. Then, unless you're a web developer, you forget how to do it next time you need to :3

That's what bugs me. Something as straightforward as a 3 column layout shouldn't require "tricks" for it. Googling it found 3 pages dedicated to explaining this "trick" (each of them wildly different, of course).

One of them was the one I used. Being a "trick", it apparently doesn't always work.

Michel Fortin wrote:
> Very true. CSS is great, except when you want columns, especially more than 2 columns with where columns have a background that must end at the same height.
> 
> That said, you could play with `display: table`. But the basic problem with `display: table` (like many "advanced" things in CSS) is that it won't work much with IE less than 8. Can you believe it took so long for Microsoft to implement this important part of a specification from 2009 (CSS 2.1)? This is really the problem with the web: the dominant browser stopped evolving during a long period and is only now beginning to catch up. So now we're navigating in a sea of workarounds because everyone needs columns and other things that need a hack to work in IE.

Looks like I'm going back to < table > tags.

Andrei Alexandrescu wrote:
> I find it surprising that anyone on this forum finds this format even remotely passable, never mind better than the old one (which didn't set the bar all that high).

With all due respect to Walter, as a professional web designer I have to agree with Andrei. It's terrible for all the reasons mentioned ... and more. "1995 programmer art" sums it up.

Sad as it may seem to some, the way D (and its parent company Digital Mars) are presented and marketed is just as important, if not more so, to many potential users of D as the quality of the language itself. If their first impression of the company is amateurish then that can and does reflect poorly on the language. Many people do judge a book by its cover.

I'd suggest (at least in the interim) using the http://d-programming-language.org/ look and feel.

Walter, I think you're on the right track with your desire to make the home page more of a clean, minimalistic gateway to the different sections of Digital Mars, but the design and execution need work.

I think so, too.
Although this background:
http://d-programming-language.org/images/gradient-red.jpg
<http://d-programming-language.org/images/gradient-red.jpg>looks slightly
pixelated to me.

On Mon, Oct 4, 2010 at 5:14 PM, Brian Hay <bhay@construct3d.com> wrote:

>
> I'd suggest (at least in the interim) using the
> http://d-programming-language.org/ look and feel.
>
>

Brian Hay wrote:
> With all due respect to Walter, as a professional web designer I have to agree with Andrei. It's terrible for all the reasons mentioned ... and more. "1995 programmer art" sums it up.

Ok, but on the other hand, mint.com gets high fives for its home page. But I find it to be slow loading, the green-on-green text (near the bottom) impossible to read, and the animated text slideshows irritating.

Or maybe I'm just too old :-)

On 5-10-2010 2:33, Walter Bright wrote:
> Robert Clipsham wrote:
>> On 04/10/10 03:59, Walter Bright wrote:
>>> Lionello Lunesu wrote:
>>>> The new page loads terribly slow because of some embedded resource
>>>> from twitter.com. Twitter is blocked in China, so when I open your
>>>> website nothing is shown until the connection to twitter times out.
>>>> Perhaps you can use XmlHttpRequest in javascript to load the twitter
>>>> stuff on the 'background'?
>>>
>>> The previous page had the same javascript in it. I don't know how this
>>> one could load slow and the previous one not.
>>>
>>> Can you post a diff for how to change the html to load in the
>>> background?
>>
>> Rather than getting the JS to load it in the background, the lazy
>> option is to move the two <script> tags to the bottom of the html
>> before </body> rather than before </head>. Browsers will block
>> rendering of the page if it encounters a script tag until the script
>> has been loaded - by placing them at the end the page will be
>> rendered, followed by loading the scripts.
>
> Done. Good idea!

Works!

On 10/4/10 18:54 CDT, Walter Bright wrote:
> Brian Hay wrote:
>> With all due respect to Walter, as a professional web designer I have
>> to agree with Andrei. It's terrible for all the reasons mentioned ...
>> and more. "1995 programmer art" sums it up.
>
> Ok, but on the other hand, mint.com gets high fives for its home page.
> But I find it to be slow loading, the green-on-green text (near the
> bottom) impossible to read, and the animated text slideshows irritating.
>
> Or maybe I'm just too old :-)

I think you and I (as many programmers who aren't web designers) are in the "don't/don't" place (we don't know what we don't know). Getting from there to "do/don't" -> "do/do" -> "don't/do" is a long, arduous process. So we're essentially unable to predict accurately the likeability of a web page by only looking at it, and clearly we're not in the position of designing a good website.

Having gladly acknowledged your interest in this topic (as I agree marketing is at this point essential), my overarching advice is:

1. Find a good professional.

2. Explain in broadest terms _what_ you are trying to achieve at the highest level (NOT "here's _how_ I want this to be, tweak it"). For example, instead of saying "I want three equally sized columns because nobody told me that that design is cr(ee|ap)py, and please color them like pee in a swimming pool while you're at it", tell them "I have three product lines, and I want them featured on the homepage in a simple and straightforward manner".

3. Let the (wo)man do h(is|er) job.

4. Pay h(im|er) a small fraction of the money you'd be losing in opportunity costs should you do all the work yourself starting from "don't/don't".

5. ...

6. Profit!


Andrei