[seul-edu] Re: Web Site Prototype

[Michael Viron <mviron@wsdo.sao.uwf.edu>]

>Well, a few comments... I don't think it's a good idea to do >away with
underlining the links.  It's become popular in >commercial sites, and so
people aren't as confused with it as >they used to be, but it's still
>(IMHO) a bad idea unless there's a compelling reason.

That's fine--it is very easy to fix that--I was planning on replacing the
text menu along the side with graphics anyways.
>I think it also might rely too heavily on stylesheets.  It would be
>nice if you could change the stylesheet and change the look for the
>entire site, but I don't think that's even possible in a theoretical
>way -- stylesheets can only change the look of individual elements,
>not the structure of the elements.  Without changing the structure
>of the elements you can't really change the look.  XSL/XSLT is one 
>possible way to do this, but I've only heard bad things about that...
>anyway, maybe Zope would also offer a way to abstract the look more
>completely.
>
>Also, the stylesheet means another file needs to be retrieved in
>order to render the page.  Inline stylesheets (via <style></style>)
>mean more maintenance, but are advantageous for rendering.  The
>maintenance would be fixed if we were using something that
>abstracted the look, since it could add the style in as well.
>
Actually, a stylesheet (i.e., a CSS file) is only retrieved once for an
entire site, regardless of where it is referenced.  If you use inline
stylesheets, then the browser has to load (and parse) the stylesheet with
every page it loads.  (not to mention it is terrible maintenance-wise.)
>Stylesheet support is also really spotty.  My own experience
>using stylesheets has hardly made me love them -- they can refine
>the look quite nicely, and as long as it's a refinement it doesn't
>matter if everyone doesn't get to see it.  But table widths and
>the sort seem a bit extreme to put in the stylesheet, especially
>because they relate to icons and other things used in the page,
>which needn't otherwise be tied to the stylesheet.  I think at
>this point -- and for the foreseeable future -- stylesheets should
>not play an essential role in the page.

Actually, the styles that I am using in the prototypes style sheet are
supported by at least Netscape 4.05 and later, and Internet Explorer 4.0
and later.  I've been very careful not to use any style element that is not
supported by both browsers.
>I'm not a big fan of menus -- though others may like them.  I've
>haven't really asked people enough to get a good feel.  The ones
>on the bottom of sites, like:
>
>        Main | Contact | Reference | Yadayada
>
>are good, I think, and don't otherwise intrude on the web page.
>Menus seem like they can take a lot of space, and on the web they
>are variously useful and useless, so people can't consistently
>place their faith in menus for navigation.  Expandable menus are
>nice, though.

That largely depends on how one lays out the menu--there are a number of
ways to make a useless menu (i.e., by using frames with set heights.) and
there are just as many ways to create a useful sidebar menu that is common
to all pages.  I've noticed a lot of times, especially with many links, the
bottom or top of a web document is not the best idea.
>My last (hopefully constructive) criticism would be the use of
>pixel-widths in tables as opposed to percentages.  It wastes a
>lot of the screen space for people with higher resolutions,
>and can make it harder to resize pages for doing multiple things
>on the screen (when you have multiple not-overlapping windows).
>I expect (hope) that people will be using the site like this,
>especially if it has good HOWTOs on it.  (this is also part of
>the issue with the menu as well.
>I think you could just make the main table have a width of 100%, 
>put a pixel width on the menu column, and let the rest expand as 
>necessary.  With simple tables I haven't had much problems 
>getting this to render properly.
You have to be very careful how you set % widths--That's fine provided you
don't have an image with a set pixel width as your "title".
>
>Something that's just occured to me -- I'll be doing this in the
>future as well -- is that titles/subtitles will render better
>on Lynx if you place <center></center> around them instead of
>using table-based or stylesheet-based centering (which Lynx will
>ignore).  (Lynx is also a place where menus can be annoying)

Use of the center tag within a table, especially when one can utilize <th>,
can get to be annoying--it adds more html code into the page that a browser
has to render.

The biggest problem is where do we want to stop?  Do we want to design a
page that is just text--so that it will totally work with lynx? or do we
want to help ease the task of maintaining the site?

I'll be happy to do whatever should be done to get the prototype ready as a
"template" file for switching content out.

Let me know,

Mike
>
>-- 
>Ian Bicking         / 4869 N. Talman Ave. Apt. G, Chicago, IL 60625
>bickiia@earlham.edu / http://www.cs.earlham.edu/~bickiia
>