OT-Killing Pop-ups as a webmaster

In article d7aub.226068$Tr4.669834@attbi_s03, "Jay Honeck"
wrote:

I don't mean to sound rude, but if the sites are invisible to you because
of
YOUR choice of browser, how is this anyone's problem but yours?

Blaming the website, when it is clearly a limitation of your browser, is
illogical.

not exactly. A website, by definition, claims to comply with the
HTML standards. A browser, by definition, is able to render HTML.
If a compliant browser can't properly display a webpage because
the site has invalid HTML, the fault lies with the site.

The whole point of the www is to move away from closed systems
and properitary software. The point is to move to platform
independance.

--
Bob Noel

"Jay Honeck" wrote in message
news:d7aub.226068$Tr4.669834@attbi_s03...

I don't mean to sound rude, but if the sites are invisible to you because
of
YOUR choice of browser, how is this anyone's problem but yours?

Blaming the website, when it is clearly a limitation of your browser, is
illogical.
--


Please send this to Bill Gates. This is JUST what he wants to hear! He
will be so happy!

Make products which claim to be compliant with standards (yet don't) but
that only really work together, then claim that everyone else is at fault
and it's not your problem, then boost prices in every market you become a
monopoly in.


Let me put this another way, related to aviation. Bill Gates decides he
will now build airplanes. So he buys several manufacturers and engine
suppliers. He then claims big improvements can be made if he had a special
additive in fuel. Unfortunately this additive corrodes the fuel systems of
older, non-compliant planes. No matter, it's optional. Most planes can be
retrofitted for it, but the older engines still don't run that well on it.
Now, Bill's planes are indeed good and he sells lots of them. Enough, in
fact, that he buys an oil company and has that company specialize in this
custom fuel. He sells it at a very low price, further enhancing the appeal
of his planes. His fuel company also sells regular avgas at very low
prices. Other oil companies decide the aviation market is too small to
fight for, so start dropping out. Bill's oil company ends up with 90% of
the market. Then he decides to start phasing in the additive and only
supplying fuel with it.

YOUR problem, dude; it's your plane that uses the "nonstandard" fuel.

(I know, terrible analogy, but still fun to think up and type)
Peter

Jay Honeck wrote:

I don't mean to sound rude, but if the sites are invisible to you because of
YOUR choice of browser, how is this anyone's problem but yours?

It's *your* problem if your site is one of the invisible ones and you're trying
to attract customers. Which your site is, and which you are.

So I'll stay at hotels that use standard HTML for their web sites, rent from car
agencies that use standard HTML, etc.

So, ok, I know you and your hotel, Jay. But when I'm shopping for a place to
stay for vacation in (say) Cosby, TN, and the site comes up blank (as one of
your pages did), I don't hit "reload", I go on to the next site in the Yahoo
list. And I'll never come back.

George Patterson
The actions taken by the New Hampshire Episcopalians (ie. inducting a gay
bishop) are an affront to Christians everywhere. I am just thankful that
the church's founder, Henry VIII, and his wife Catherine of Aragon, and his
wife Anne Boleyn, and his wife Jane Seymour, and his wife Anne of Cleves,
and his wife Katherine Howard, and his wife Catherine Parr are no longer
here to suffer through this assault on traditional Christian marriages.

On Mon, 17 Nov 2003 20:23:37 GMT, "Jay Honeck"
wrote:

I don't mean to sound rude, but if the sites are invisible to you because of
YOUR choice of browser, how is this anyone's problem but yours?

Blaming the website, when it is clearly a limitation of your browser, is
illogical.

There are a few reasons why it is a good thing to observe HTML
standards, even if non-standard stuff displays OK on the majority of
browsers (Microsoft).

HTML is designed to be platform independent, and flexible in how it is
displayed. Some examples of people who don't use Internet Explorer
exactly the same way you do might be blind people who use software
that reads the page, people with slow connections who turn off auto
loading of images or people with older computers. Good HTML will
provide usable web pages to all these groups, bad HTML often will not.

Another point is that the search engines you are targeting probably do
not use Microsoft, and I'm sure don't use Internet Explorer to do the
indexing. If you say non-microsoft platforms are unimportant, that
includes the search engines that you were trying to target.

In article d7aub.226068$Tr4.669834@attbi_s03, Jay Honeck wrote:
I don't mean to sound rude, but if the sites are invisible to you because of
YOUR choice of browser, how is this anyone's problem but yours?

If the problem is that a *world wide web* site isn't really following
W3C standards, it is NOT the fault of the browser: it's the fault of the
software used to create the website, or if coded by hand, the person who
created the website. It is perfectly possible (and not that hard!) to
make a website that renders correctly on everything from a Sony-Erricsen
Symbian phone to Konqueror running on a 4-processor Solaris system.

Also note that mobile phone based web-browsers are going to become
increasingly prevalent. For a business in the hotel industry, mobile
devices will be VERY important to you, as people will probably use their
GPRS or 3G phone to look up a hotel when they show up to Iowa City
airport on a cold and rainy night. Most of these phones don't run MSIE -
they run the Symbian browser. Write Microsoft-only web pages at your
peril!

--
Dylan Smith, Castletown, Isle of Man
Flying: http://www.dylansmith.net
Frontier Elite Universe: http://www.alioth.net
"Maintain thine airspeed, lest the ground come up and smite thee"

Jay Honeck wrote:

I find it fascinating that you say:

On more of a philosophical note, the internet works because users and
providers _cooperate_ on protocols. Tolerance of non-conforming sites
hurts
us all.

Yet admit:

I use Mozilla (or Konquerer) on Linux. As a result I encounter many sites
that do not conform and are therefore unavailable to me.

I don't mean to sound rude, but if the sites are invisible to you because
of YOUR choice of browser, how is this anyone's problem but yours?

Blaming the website, when it is clearly a limitation of your browser, is
illogical.

No offense taken. And FTR I can see your site just fine, I just can't view
the videos because they are in proprietary formats. (There is no viewer for
Linux for .wmv's as of now.)

My browsers are compliant, it's the HTML they are pointed at that isn't. I
doubt that you are suggesting that you only want guests that use MS.

I use Linux for a number of reasons, one of them being that I am unwilling
to have systems running MS-Windows facing the internet. I think you'll
agree that this practice is becoming more and more popular.

Even if I used MS as an OS, I still would use Mozilla just because I like
the features it provides. If it came to pass that Mozilla was found to not
work correctly because of non-compliance I would look for a new browser
too. (Assuming it wasn't just a bug that would be fixed after being
reported).

There are very real benefits to consumers in having the web be platform
independent. It is incumbent on all users (providers and consumers) to make
sure that happens. Right now content providers don't take a very big hit
when they don't adhere to standards so people like me often sound like a
voice in the wilderness. But that is changing.....


--
Frank....H

BTIZ wrote:
more OT..

Jay.. I am also learning HTML and MS FrontPage...

This is such a common topic that I hestiate to respond to it,
particularly because it's so OT, but friends don't let friends use
FrontPage. :-)

May I suggest that you (and Jay, and the remainder of the bipedal world
for that matter) NOT waste your time with FrontPage? It creates
HORRIBLE (meaning, non-standards-compliant) HTML and some of the most
annoying website designs I've ever seen. One particular annoyance is
the use of JAVA for simple menu buttons (!) Uh, talk about an improper
use of the technology.

Some recommendations:

1) Go get a copy of Dreamweaver. You owe it to yourself AND the people
who will visit your site.

http://www.macromedia.com/software/dreamweaver/

It creates near PERFECT HTML and has a really nice WYSIWYG editor.
Incidentally, you don't NEED Dreamweaver or FrontPage to create a
website...they only eliminate the need to code raw HTML for the vast
majority of sites. And, when you finally discover the wonders of
standards-compliant CSS, Dreamweaver will significantly simplify
creation of CSS styles.

2) Check out the following site, which contains a lot of really good
(and strangely funny) advice on how to create a user-friendly site that
emphasizes content and compatability over flashiness and gimicktry.

http://www.webpagesthatsuck.com/

For what it's worth, my site was created with Dreamweaver and uses no
flash, java, javascript or any other client-side dependent crap, and the
first line in almost every email I get that references the site is "hey,
you have a really nice site".

And no, I'm not being vain...only providing a personal example of
what's possible with what I'll choose to call a "minimalist, yet
technically competant" approach to website design.

Oh, one other thing. STOP using IE. Go grab the latest Mozilla or
Firebird browsers. They both have pop-up ad blocking built in.

Safe flying,

-Doug

--
--------------------
Doug Vetter, CFIMEIA

http://www.dvcfi.com
--------------------

I understand all of the above Doug... but when the salary paying company is
using MS FP for it's INTRANET and wants you to learn it.. and pays for the
course and a home copy for me to use as I desire..

then learn it I shall.. and make myself more valuable to the company... and
with what I learn.. if I can "convince" the company that they need to move
to Macromedia/Dreamweaver.. or some other "software of the decade" .. then
we will make that costly transition at a later time.. (after promotions and
I am the decision maker to spend the companies $$)

BT

"Doug Vetter" wrote in message
et...
BTIZ wrote:
more OT..

Jay.. I am also learning HTML and MS FrontPage...

This is such a common topic that I hestiate to respond to it,
particularly because it's so OT, but friends don't let friends use
FrontPage. :-)

May I suggest that you (and Jay, and the remainder of the bipedal world
for that matter) NOT waste your time with FrontPage? It creates
HORRIBLE (meaning, non-standards-compliant) HTML and some of the most
annoying website designs I've ever seen. One particular annoyance is
the use of JAVA for simple menu buttons (!) Uh, talk about an improper
use of the technology.

Some recommendations:

1) Go get a copy of Dreamweaver. You owe it to yourself AND the people
who will visit your site.

http://www.macromedia.com/software/dreamweaver/

It creates near PERFECT HTML and has a really nice WYSIWYG editor.
Incidentally, you don't NEED Dreamweaver or FrontPage to create a
website...they only eliminate the need to code raw HTML for the vast
majority of sites. And, when you finally discover the wonders of
standards-compliant CSS, Dreamweaver will significantly simplify
creation of CSS styles.

2) Check out the following site, which contains a lot of really good
(and strangely funny) advice on how to create a user-friendly site that
emphasizes content and compatability over flashiness and gimicktry.

http://www.webpagesthatsuck.com/

For what it's worth, my site was created with Dreamweaver and uses no
flash, java, javascript or any other client-side dependent crap, and the
first line in almost every email I get that references the site is "hey,
you have a really nice site".

And no, I'm not being vain...only providing a personal example of
what's possible with what I'll choose to call a "minimalist, yet
technically competant" approach to website design.

Oh, one other thing. STOP using IE. Go grab the latest Mozilla or
Firebird browsers. They both have pop-up ad blocking built in.

Safe flying,

-Doug

--
--------------------
Doug Vetter, CFIMEIA

http://www.dvcfi.com
--------------------

Now I have to rewrite what I was writing, I visited your webpage with
nutscrape and your faq page crashed my browser.

But your page talks about how to make pages works and how crappy some sites
are. You have several problems, one being your not to experienced at using
your graphics program what ever it may be (photoshop what ever), your faq
page crashed my browser. Its not browser friendly, I wont visit it again
because I dont want my browser to crash.


Doug Vetter wrote:

particularly because it's so OT, but friends don't let friends use
FrontPage. :-)

May I suggest that you (and Jay, and the remainder of the bipedal world
for that matter) NOT waste your time with FrontPage? It creates
HORRIBLE (meaning, non-standards-compliant) HTML and some of the most
annoying website designs I've ever seen. One particular annoyance is
the use of JAVA for simple menu buttons (!) Uh, talk about an improper
use of the technology.

Some recommendations:

1) Go get a copy of Dreamweaver. You owe it to yourself AND the people
who will visit your site.

http://www.macromedia.com/software/dreamweaver/

It creates near PERFECT HTML and has a really nice WYSIWYG editor.
Incidentally, you don't NEED Dreamweaver or FrontPage to create a
website...they only eliminate the need to code raw HTML for the vast
majority of sites. And, when you finally discover the wonders of
standards-compliant CSS, Dreamweaver will significantly simplify
creation of CSS styles.

2) Check out the following site, which contains a lot of really good
(and strangely funny) advice on how to create a user-friendly site that
emphasizes content and compatability over flashiness and gimicktry.

http://www.webpagesthatsuck.com/

For what it's worth, my site was created with Dreamweaver and uses no
flash, java, javascript or any other client-side dependent crap, and the
first line in almost every email I get that references the site is "hey,
you have a really nice site".

And no, I'm not being vain...only providing a personal example of
what's possible with what I'll choose to call a "minimalist, yet
technically competant" approach to website design.

Oh, one other thing. STOP using IE. Go grab the latest Mozilla or
Firebird browsers. They both have pop-up ad blocking built in.

Safe flying,

-Doug

--
--------------------
Doug Vetter, CFIMEIA

http://www.dvcfi.com
--------------------

Doug Vetter wrote in news:muMtb.19345$YZ2.6250949
@news4.srv.hcvlny.cv.net:

1) Go get a copy of Dreamweaver. You owe it to yourself AND the people
who will visit your site.

http://www.macromedia.com/software/dreamweaver/

Doug, I agree that Dreamweaver makes better and more consistently
accessible web pages. I'd also consider, however, whether the user is a
casual web writer or someone that does it for a living or supports some
organization. I, personally, am a Dreamweaver MX user.

When asked, I recommend that people shy away from MS Front Page unless
they are certain that MSIE is the only browser which will access the
site. Microsoft has a habit of hooking into their own code segments
which may not exist in other corresponding competitive programs. On the
otherhand, I also suggest that they stay away from Dreamweaver unless
they have the time to learn it, a reason to spend the money, and the need
for the bells and whistles.

There are several web page authoring programs (some free and some
shareware) which I've heard do an adequate job of web creation. Folks
might want to check http://download.com.com/

--
John Godwin
Silicon Rallye Inc.