Re: DHTML & CSS update

Mike,

Sounds like you are going to have a great site. Every now and then I meet
somebody in person or in cyberspace who uses Web TV, or is visually
handicapped or has one of those palm computers and so forth. How you keep
from excluding those folks I don't know. If your intention is to move
forward in your design without malice toward those who might get left
behind, I suppose it will all work out in the end. That is, solutions to
make your site accessible to everyone will keep coming your way.

One example is frames, which still do not have a very good reputation with
either designers or people who surf the web. But I like frames, so I kept
looking for ways to do frames the "right" way, to keep my frame-based web
pages user-friendly for all visitors, especially search engine spiders and
people who might come to my site from a key-word search and find the page
not in its frame context. I have found several solutions if anyone is
interested.

Billy Dean
'98 XV1100
billy61(at)earthlink.net
http://www.qwertyarrow.com/virago.htm
"Don't give me no plastic saddle -- I want to feel that leather when I
ride..."

----- Original Message -----
From: "Mike Kear" <mkear(at)afpwebworks.com>
To: "'Billy Dean'" <billy61(at)earthlink.net>; <hwg-techniques(at)hwg.org>
Sent: Wednesday, June 25, 2003 10:38 PM
Subject: RE: DHTML & CSS update


The reason this has come about is that I've been in an environment where we
can't use any of the latest good stuff because we're trying to accommodate
all those folks who want to come to the site regardless of what browser they
might have.   We only decided to put our first piece of javascript on the
site a year ago!

Now the political situation has changed a little (internally I mean) and we
can get away with being a little braver, without having a senior manager
coming crying that the sky is falling saying "See! I told you you would be
alienating all our users" if one person complained.

But before I went ahead and designed a site that would include features that
some browsers couldn't see, I thought I'd see what experiences you people
had.

I think it's fair to say that people on this list (or at least as far as you
can say those who responded accurately reflect the opinions of this list)
overwhelmingly think it's time to include DHTML and other newer technologies
if the situation calls for it.  Goodiegoodiegoodie!  I hadn't realised that
you can have a css class that doesn't display, and therefore the contents
will only show for those who don't use css compatible browsers (because I
must have been half asleep when I read that part of the guide!)

By using CSS and DHTML we can have an entirely dynamic site, where merely
adding a category and content to the database, the whole site will
reconfigure, menus, search, sitemap, 'what's new' page and all
automatically.  We can have a web-based Content Management System (CMS) and
it's going to be great!

What we didn't want is to be up to our armpits in work on the CMS, and get
it knocked off the rails by having one or two users complaining because they
can't access everything with their IE3 browser.

Thanks for the advice people, and I'll tell you where the site is when it's
done.



Cheers,
Michael Kear
Windsor, NSW, Australia
AFP Webworks.




-----Original Message-----
From: owner-hwg-techniques(at)hwg.org [mailto:owner-hwg-techniques(at)hwg.org] On
Behalf Of Billy Dean
Sent: Thursday, 26 June 2003 2:04 PM
To: hwg-techniques(at)hwg.org
Subject: Re: DHTML & CSS update

It is my opinion that very few designers want to exclude anybody from their
web sites. And you don't have to. It is pretty simple to include code that
gives people with old browsers access to your pages, such as no script, no
frames and so forth. I just don't spend any time trying to accomodate the
idiosyncracies of every browser out there, simply because people cannot or
will not upgrade.

BTW, you can buy a brand new computer with almost all the bells and whistles
for less than $500. I know, because my wife just did...

Billy Dean

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