From: Thomas Barclay <Thomas.Barclay@s...>
Date: Sat, 2 Nov 2002 13:52:17 -0500
Subject: [OT] Web formats/etc.
Bri's pages are easy to read. Most of the problems in converting stuff to stargrunt.ca's formats are this: We have a stated goal to keep the pages short. This means for some of the chapters in Los' work, I have to paginate it into a bunch of HTML pages. For cleanliness, we hand code our HTML. And we use CSS/SSI or something of that sort (tagging text using span tags and a class identifier) to markup for formatting. And of course if we have to embed images, since we focus on load speeds, we have to tune their size and color depths etc. So converting an article is a bit of an effort (Adrian is faster at it than me and probably better at it too). Maybe one day, if I'm feeling sharp, I'll write some software to make conversions from normal formats automagical. On the matter of light text, dark background - we thought about that. Adrian has some thoughts at the time which I'm sure he'll share with everyone (he is both an industrial designer and a web geek so he has some background to speak to this). Me, I too like light text on dark background, but I've seen some that I found hard to read. The real clincher against this in my books is if you've ever had your printer go through half a cartridge of ink trying to print white on black (rather than reversing the stuff to print). Part of how we plan to get around this on stargrunt.ca is providing printer-friendly versions of our web pages (pretty much just the content white-on-black), but that is a project in the offing yet. BTW, we're working on our links section, so if you want us to link to your page, go to stargrunt.ca (to our feedback form) and send us your URL. Provided there's nothing scandalous, we'll probably throw up a link! (Note: We must have some fairly broad standards..... I've linked the NRE.... *grin* - Hi John!) My main goals in web design are this: - Usability on all browsers (Adrian just fixed an SSI thing and now Opera renders the site well, as does IE, NS (maybe not the oldest one...), and Mozilla - even Lynx works after a fashion) - Download speed (I'm on 31kbps max - 26-28 kpbs more commonly so I sympathize) - Readability (note, our black text is NOT displayed on an actinic white - it is displayed on an off white colour) - Common look and feel across all sub-pages Adrian and I want everyone to be able to visit the site, have it load quickly, have it look passably attractive, and have the information be available and indexed in a semi-useful fashion. And we don't want to impose technical limitations (only works on IE forex) on our viewers where at all possible to avoid. And annoying things like flashing stuff, music, flash animations, etc. are not used - yes they can do some cool looking stuff, but we'd rather be slightly less cool and a lot more accessible. We hope the content makes up for the lack of "gee whiz" modern graphics stuff.:) BTW, just a nod of thanks to all of our friends and contributors for the help so far. The domain is registered through 2004 right now and with any luck the site will continue to grow and mature. And soon, if I'm "infinitely liesured", I might even have some extra time to work on things..... Tomb