Re: The Independence web site (new thread)

[Donovan Rebbechi <elflord@pegasus.rutgers.edu>]

On Fri, 11 Jun 1999, Rune Christiansen wrote:

> First, I'll comment a couple of things regarding the current web site:
> 
>   1. The links page:
>        Why is there a page with links??? It has nothing to do with the
>        project! I think, that the web site should only contain
>        information related to Project Independence, not Linux in
>        general... (all pages should go through a revision)

A lot of new users visit our page. A page full of links doesn't do any
harm.

>   2. Bad HTML:
>        In my humble opinion, the PI web site contains *bad* HTML code.
>        Among other things, it contains MSIE specific code, it's even
>        stated in the META tags...(!) The positioning of all of the HTML
>        tags are not to pretty either!

Such as ? The headers of the page are messy, but this doesn't matter since
they are rarely edited by a human being. Can you give examples ? ( mail me
directly ) 

If you can show me where the MSIE specific code is, go ahead. Everything I
wrote was done by hand, but there were other contributors ( who used
WYSIWYG tools. the end result is that I am dead set against these tools )

>   3. Kill the style sheets!:

No. 

This has already been decided and agreed on. I already moved the site
over to style sheets, because this was the consensus among the project
members at the time. I don't want to totally redo the site every time
someone with a different opinion comes along. If you stay with the project
for a while, your opinions count for a lot. If you're new, your opinions
only count if they don't make life difficult for everyone.

>        Style sheets are not supported widely in the "browser-market". By
>        using them, you would make the page browser-specific and that is
>        *not good*! 

Wrong. The CSS just enhances the logical markup  tags to
make the pages look prettier in CSS enabled browsers. A browser that isn't
CSS enabled just sees their browsers "interpretation" of the logical
markup tags instead of mine. Can you name a browser for which the pages
don't currently work ? 

> Use of SSI (or PHP?) should be used instead

yes, but it puts more stress on the server, and it's a lot of work to
implement. And I *still* don't see what's wrong with CSS.

> Even though Donovan doesnt' think a redo of the site is necessary, I
> think it would help. 

Every new person has their own ideas, and I can understand that you'd like
everything redone your way. Some of your ideas are probably workable and
will help the site. Some of them will just burn a lot of effort and move
us sideways (as opposed to forwards ).  Once you've worked with us for a
while, you can have everything redone your own way. However, understand my
point of view: we can't nuke the site every time someone with a different
opinion comes along, especially if that someone leaves us in the near
future. 

> Even though text-only versions of web sites can be
> pretty boring (most of them are), it is possible to make some (limited)
> effect with text only:
> 
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
> | Home | Developers | Manifesto | Software | Mailing list | Site map |
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------

Why bother ? I've already browsed the site with lynx , and it's fine. The
big problem with doing two sites is that it creates a maintennance
issue. Maintennance issues are ***bad***.

> I am a big fan of SSI. It's much simpler to use than perl (don't flame
> me for saying that ;-) when you need a simple-to-update web site.
> Therefore, I think that SSI is the way if we want pages that are easy to
> update.
> 
> You should also remember that SSI is not just for including text into a
> document! It goes way beyond that :-D

we could try implementing SSI as a way of doing the page headers. This is
the main place where I see that it could be useful.

The way I have it, to update the headers, you need to edit the template
then run the script. With SSI, you could just edit the template.

> It's obvious that we need to split the job into pieces! I don't know
> about you guys, but I'd like to:
> 
>   1. Make a new, text-only web site (usable by any browser)

First, you need to 
(a)	make a strong case that the current site isn't usable by any
browser,
(b)	make a case that it will be feasible to maintain two pages.

>   2. Take care of updating some of the pages.

Ah huh

>   3. Do the administration of a "WWW group".

Not sure what this means.
 
-- Donovan