Re: James Roberts

Dear Captain - I sent this message to you on 1/23 but inadvertently
transposed the carbon copied recipients' addresses. So, thinking that's why
it never got posted, am re-sending to you. (<:
Sharon

Captain:
Am wondering if you, Tamara, Hugh or anyone else in our group would be
interested in tackling a --big--problem I've inherited. Have a client whose
site I revised recently. He just loaded Netscape 6 on his computer at home
and is had a horrific time accessing his site. He has a friend in Asia using
Netscape 3.x who also couldn't access it. By that I mean they couldn't even
bring the site up. So, after I changed the DTD, now my client can bring up
the site but none of the navigation works anymore and he can't get beyond
the home page! Note: It works just fine on my Netscape 4.7_ browser so I was
unaware of any difficulties until now. (Who knows what's going on in Asia
with 3.x)

I changed the home page DTD to 4.01 transitional with a URI of
".http://www.w3.org/TR/1999/REC-html401-19991224/loose.dtd" at the
suggestion some days ago of someone else in the group...and added CSS. I
changed all the other 13 first-level pages to the same DTD but left out CSS.
My problem is I can't load Netscape 6 on my computer--it keeps bombing out
during installation, so I gave up. I can't test from home and no one I know
has yet loaded Net 6.

Please don't look closely at the body text as it's a nightmare. The site was
originally created by someone else with some wretched editor that left out
literals, had no tables, and did awful things and was originally --one--
page in length (first-level)!!!!! I made fourteen pages out of the one page
creating nav buttons, tables, etc. etc., but I left the text and tags alone
(for the most part) except for the Home page and About page. The second
level pages number over 100 and are absolutely wretched (no DTD, no meta
tags, no CSS, no tables, no nothin'!). You can take a look at
http://www.hi-tm.com .

Any thoughts? Any suggestions? What DTD do you think I should use under the
circumstances? Leave a URI in or take out? Maybe I should use 3.2 Final as
the DTD? Help!!!!!
Warm regards,
Sharon

---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Sharon F. Malone
http://www.24caratdesign.com
"web page design and Internet writing services"

----- Original Message -----
From: "Captain F.M. O'Lary" <ctfuzzy(at)canopy.net>
To: "HWGBASICS" <hwg-basics(at)hwg.org>
Sent: Tuesday, January 23, 2001 3:44 PM
Subject: James Roberts


> Your response is hereby formally rejected for breaking the 35-40 character
> rule.
>
> Try again.
>
> <just kidding. Please, read on>
>
>
> At 11:16 PM 1/23/01 +0100, James Roberts wrote:
> >|Why?
> >
> >Look I'm new round here, and to HTML. But, 4.01 Trans seems to have been
a
> >requirement because 4.01 Strict broke browsers. No? And now there's XHTML
> >1.0 Transitional, for similar reasons...
>
>
> In a word, NO.
>
> It is when you do *not* want to break browsers that you use the strict DTD
> (don't take my word, check out the URL that started this whole thread).
>
> So you have it exactly right - only backwards.
>
> The transitional DTD is to create a "grace period" for web developers and
> browser manufacturers to get up to speed. It WILL be dropped. The strict
> DTD will not.
>
> >
> >
> >|Why Not?
> >
> >Seems to me with HTML and derivatives we're in the position of the lost
> >traveller who made the mistake of asking the Irish guy how to get to
Dublin:
> >'Sure and if'n I was you, I would not be starting from here'.  It's easy
in
> >retrospect to see many things that could have been done better. I've only
> >just got into HTML, although I had my first dial-up internet mail account
in
> >1988 (this in the UK). That's because early HTML was a bit of a joke - I
> >thought. Now it's powerful enough to be useable in a limited way. But
> >backward compatibility is critical in some applications. The universities
I
> >know best in the UK all are using early Netscape (on Windows NT 4,
already!)
> >for various reasons best uninvestigated. The transitional spec seems to
be
> >helpful in writing code that displays adequately on earlier browsers, but
> >has the odd bell and whistle on later ones. So - do they really
disapprove?
> >Dunno...
>
> Well, speaking as an Irish guy (O'Lary) . . .
>
> Early is a relative term. If you have NN 2 supporting the 4.x transitional
> DTD I'll kiss your . . . well, you know. If you can get NN3 to support
> anything except the very most rudimentary features of 4.x without choking,
> I'll kiss your  . . . well, you know.
>
> Then, I'll buy you a couple of pints, we'll get to be good friends, and
> then in the traditional way of the Irish, we'll go out back of the Pub and
> beat the crap out of each other for a hour or two, and then start the
whole
> process over again.
>
> Ahhhhh, Culture. That is what America is lacking!
>
> Fuzzy
> <with tong planted so far in his cheek - it hurts>
> ______________________________________________________________
> Captain F.M. O'Lary
> webmaster(at)canopy.net
> Another year ends.
> All targets met. All systems working. All customers satisfied.
> All staff eagerly enthusiastic. All pigs fed and ready to fly.
> ------------------------------------------------------------------
>

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