Re: New website (inspired by the "Website layout" thread)

[Jeroen Ruigrok/asmodai <asmodai@xxxxxx>]

-On [20040206 20:12], Amar Takhar (verm@xxxxxxxxxxxxx) wrote:
[1st-4th generation browsers]

>Yes, speed is also a huge issue, 'nobody who matters' is an avenue Microsoft
>followed, look at the horrible mess they created.

I fail to see the relevance of this to the original topic.  Yes, it
might very well be Microsoft managed to do some non-standard things with
IE.  But the fact is that _less_ than even 1% of the user agents on the
web are 4.x or lower.  That means that 99% are v5 and higher and have the
relevant technical standards onboard.

>If it's a technical site, be technical, nobody is comming to the site for the
>latest music video, they're comming to the site for a technical reason.

And this is a reason to have v1-v4 still supported?  You want to create
a maintenance nightmare trying to support v4 and lower UA's
(User-Agents) just because it is a technical site?

>> You can of course also use static pages for this, which would have made
>> more sense given your stance towards static pages.  If you find the
>> referring URL information useful I wonder how much it adds for a small
>> website.
>
>Of course you can, however using static pages does not give you the
>abilitity to show the referring URL, which is why custome error pages
>are better.

It might be very handy, but the best system is still just basic log
files analysis of error messages.  These include referral information
(provided you have enabled such in your webserver configuration).  This
take is less error-prone than depending on the user of the site, whom
in, basing on my experience, 80%-90% of the cases do not bother
notifying the webmaster.

[site map]

>Start at the beginning and  it gets done, start later and you're adding 4,000
>links

If you have 4000 links you already have a very flawed website design.  :)

>You still havn't said WHY you can't use it, this entire email has been short
>snippets of dis-agreeing.

You obviously chose to read over the statements where I said "Agreed.".
Please do not be so very selective and then say I have only be
disagreeing with you.
I said that some changes are worthwhile to do, some are not.  At least
in my opinion.

>Please give me some points, and examples of _why_ SGML does not work over
>XML/XSLT.

SGML/HTML do not promote well-formedness.  XML does.  Plus the learning
curve of XML is less steep than that of SGML.
Furthermore, XML is easier to extend than SGML is.  The XML
specification is understandable for mere mortals.  Same goes for XSLT.
Ever read the SGML specification?  And the DSSSL specification?  It
might be pearls for information management, but they suck hard to get
your mind around.  This way (using XML/XSLT) you lower the contribution
hurdle.

-- 
Jeroen Ruigrok van der Werven <asmodai(at)wxs.nl> / asmodai / kita no mono
PGP fingerprint: 2D92 980E 45FE 2C28 9DB7  9D88 97E6 839B 2EAC 625B
http://www.tendra.org/   | http://diary.in-nomine.org/
Of course I can't say, whether it will become better if it gets changed;
but as much as I can say, it must change if it shall become good...