Talk about your COMPUTER!

[Soul]

A visitor with a LCD Panel monitor (Regardless of speed of computer) will also give the user an epileptic fit because of the precise nature of LCD screens.

Indeed, even in 12ms LCD's.

The next layout of my own site will support those with 1024x768, and won't look best with those with anything less

My site looks best at 1024x768, but it can still be seen at 800x600 without the dreaded "horizontal scrollbar of death" appearing. In the past it supported even 640x480, but it came at a small price (there was too much wasted space at higher resolutions), so I had to forget about 640x480 support. (Nobody uses not even a marginally-decent PC at 640x480 anymore anyway. It was different in 2001) I think I did that in early 2004. I didn't really "take it out" of the site, I simply stopped considering it when making changes to the site.

If a topic like this shows a greater amount of people with 800x600, soul will need to adjust for them

I just checked... I am amazed that it still looks good at 640x480! I'm so proud ;D



EDIT: It will only look right at 640x480 in IE, this is because I added a min-width CSS attribute that works only in Mozilla. But I only have to take that out for it to work right.

or just go mad trying to do a tableless layout that adjusts to the browser's width

This is not necessary. Just set your table widths to a percentage. i.e. width=95%. Analyzing other site's source code is teh r0x0rz.

look at George Lucas! He's a geek and look where he is!

George Lucas is probably the king of sci-fi geeks I'm no huge Star Wars fan, but I do know plenty more details about the movies than average people. Probably because I enjoy them more

[PinkFloydYoshi]

This is not necessary. Just set your table widths to a percentage. i.e. width=95%. Analyzing other site's source code is teh r0x0rz.

I know, heh. I just suddenly got aquainted with the HTML 4.01 validator. I got annoyed when more than 200 warnings came up on one of my webpages. That resulted in me learning how to script in HTML 4.01 Transitional. I even re did a CSS too and that Validates too. (This is for two of my own sites by the way, one thats not even launched yet. although, I've not made spfyw valid yet, and won't do until later this year when I do v4 - it's www.pinknetwerk.com/pink_index that Validates, but thats in a type of beta stage that doesn't qualify for a site, since it's just one page.).

Getting into the practice of using <br/> instead of <br> and doing tags that dont require a </tag> like <img src="whatever.com/img.jpg" /> takes time, but I've gotten used to it alright.

I simply stopped considering it when making changes to the site.

I'd be paranoid about leaving some pages with 640x480 support and saving pages that aren't. I dunno, it'd just become an annoyance if one page displays slightly different than another. If I make changes, I make changes to the entire site, or, as I've now set up, alter a value or two in the CSS since everything is reliant on the CSS now. One benefit of tableless layouts, also, less code in the end page, less transfer, quicker rendering. I never realised how many aspects changed when using CSS/Tableless over using tables. Although, I find using tables a lot easier.

EDIT: It will only look right at 640x480 in IE

lol, I ditched IE support. I even made a button to celebrate it. Still, the pink netwerk layout looks ok in IE. Just one or two aspects are making it look on a skew. Shows IE not complying to standards. IE 7 is not supposed to support CSS2 because Microsoft say 'It is still inherintly flawed'. Microsoft think they know better than a web standards organisation. Now thats just silly.

I'm no huge Star Wars fan, but I do know plenty more details about the movies than average people. Probably because I enjoy them more

I'm a huge sci-fi fan too. I just watch programs that are slightly more unorthodox. A Series called 'LEXX' for example. I still think the first series was best. Used to be on very late.

www.scifi.com/lexx/

Hmm, looking at the validator for this very page, (On this board) it has found 2 errors and 189 warnings. I'm so proud to have 0 errors and 0 warnings. Even the HTML Validator states 'This page is valid HTML 4.01 transitional!'. I was so happy after I validated it after completion to see that. To see that it was still valid.

[Soul]

I just suddenly got aquainted with the HTML 4.01 validator

I have always hated those W3C validator things. I've never considered them as anything useful (quite the opposite actually). I was writing a ranty post about the W3C and its validator thingies, but then I looked at my site's browser statistics, and I wondered what my site looks like in all these weird, mostly unknown browsers on the bottom half of this list...:


Listing the top 20 browsers by the number of requests for pages, sorted by the number of requests for pages.

#: #reqs: #pages: browser
--: -------: ------: -------
1: 4780369: 509579: MSIE
: 4484429: 469205: MSIE/6
: 290306: 39903: MSIE/5
: 5437: 444: MSIE/4
: 146: 24: MSIE/3
2: 543877: 50913: Mozilla
: 485207: 43900: Mozilla/1
: 900: 116: Mozilla/0
3: 23070: 8488: Netscape (compatible)
4: 26359: 1955: Opera
: 24637: 1803: Opera/7
: 1008: 79: Opera/8
: 572: 55: Opera/6
: 119: 15: Opera/5
: 13: 3: Opera/3
5: 17308: 1496: Netscape
: 13152: 1008: Netscape/4
: 3702: 463: Netscape/6
: 422: 15: Netscape/3
: 4: 1: Netscape/2
6: 1187: 722: Googlebot
: 1187: 722: Googlebot/2
7: 628: 608: webcollage
: 628: 608: webcollage/1
8: 1536: 529: Mediapartners-Google
: 1536: 529: Mediapartners-Google/2
9: 1480: 440: Konqueror
: 1315: 410: Konqueror/3
: 164: 29: Konqueror/2
10: 784: 435: msnbot
: 352: 223: msnbot/0
: 432: 212: msnbot/1
11: 688: 357: GetHTMLContents3
12: 431: 278: IRLbot
: 431: 278: IRLbot/1
13: 370: 248: ia_archiver
14: 1463: 226: Wget
: 1463: 226: Wget/1
15: 220: 175: NG
: 220: 175: NG/2
16: 220: 154: Baiduspider+(+http:
: 220: 154: Baiduspider+(+http://www
17: 2924: 149: GetRight
: 2916: 149: GetRight/5
18: 218: 137: UP.Browser
: 218: 137: UP.Browser/6
19: 174: 135: Microsoft Data Access Internet Publishing Provider Protocol Discovery
20: 241: 133: Gigabot
: 240: 132: Gigabot/2
: 1: 1: Gigabot/1
: 38802: 2006: [not listed: 346 browsers]


Not all of these are actually browsers though. For example the googlebot is the google web crawler engine. And getright is a download utility.

Anyway, as I was saying... I've always tweaked my code this way: If it looks good in Gecko-based browsers (Netscape, Mozilla, Firefox, etc) and in IE, then it's fine. As long as all of these browsers display my website perfectly with my current code, I'm satisfied. That's up until now though. I think I might just do something as crazy as... mess around with that validator thing. But JUST a little bit...

Wait... this pie chart from April 2005 is interesting:



So it may not be worth it to mess with that validator thing after all. I'm already covering the red, blue, and green areas of this pie chart. I've checked my entire site for unclosed or misspelled tags with a special program, and I'm sure it's still free of these two things. But I don't like the W3C compliance part...

Getting into the practice of using <br/> instead of <br> and doing tags that dont require a </tag> like <img src="whatever.com/img.jpg" /> takes time, but I've gotten used to it alright.

If you are going to develop a large XML website that will be accessed remotely by XML-compliant applications, then this is a good thing. Other than that, this change will bring absolutely no benefits to most websites.

I'd be paranoid about leaving some pages with 640x480 support and saving pages that aren't. I dunno, it'd just become an annoyance if one page displays slightly different than another. If I make changes, I make changes to the entire site

Oh come on... do you really prefer to have your entire site look wrong at 640x480, than just a couple pages?

One benefit of tableless layouts, also, less code in the end page, less transfer, quicker rendering

Hmm... are you completely sure about that?

lol, I ditched IE support. I even made a button to celebrate it

Heh, I just hope the pie chart above won't scare you too much...

IE 7 is not supposed to support CSS2

Microsoft said it will support some of CSS2. They probably don't want to support it 100% because this gives people the ability to continue writing code that works only in IE, therefore making themselves dependent on Microsoft and its products. It's a monopolistic strategy.

I'm a huge sci-fi fan too

Well um, I'm not a huge sci-fi fan but I like star wars. I'm not an uber-starwars fan either. One of the teachers at my college is a Starwars fan

I was so happy after I validated it after completion to see that. To see that it was still valid.

Heheh, glad to see you happy... but as you can see from the pie chart above, it may not have been necessary. If you did it just for the fun of learning then that's great, I also love learning new things even though they may or may not be exceedingly useful.

[Mailtroid]

Yoshi said:

Don't you ever say you're a racoon when you talk with other furries, in cases where you have no avatar?

Swweet...XD...yeah sure. Don't forget about his sexy raccoony-ness! Besides, I shall post my compies specs here later too....I am at work right now...and actually not supposed to be online here right now...XD I just can't wait to strike some poses...WHEE!! XD

[PinkFloydYoshi]

Heh, I just hope the pie chart above won't scare you too much...

Pah! People need educating! Too many people don't really know that IE is such a security vunerability. Thats why I have firefox buttons all over my site. I might make one page someday detailing what IE is capable of, exactly, and by downloading firefox, they can seal all those holes.

I was writing a ranty post about the W3C and its validator thingies, but then I looked at my site's browser statistics, and I wondered what my site looks like in all these weird, mostly unknown browsers on the bottom half of this list...:

Heh, a friend of mine I talk to over aim call the W3C the 'HTML Nazis' after his site showed more than 500 warnings and 10 errors. Poor kid. Still, I guess it was more for the challenge of doing it. The reason I started a site up in the first place was to see if I was capable of building a clean and concise layout, but however, showed it wasn't IE friendly..... at all. Learning standards compliant HTML allows me to build a site which does work with IE, as well as looking best in FireFox, which it does.

I've answered another quote there actually, lol.

I belive I've visited your site using Konqueror 3. WGet is a text based browser most commonly found in Linux distro's and used most commonly for completing cron-jobs.

I see GetRight on there too. There are some cheeky morons out there. GetRight is a download manager like ReGet. Basically, it allows someone to right click a page, and click 'Download all by ReGet' or 'Download all by GetRight'. After all the time it's taken for you to obtain most of those images, people are just using download managers to claim everything off your site by clicking an option in a menu.

There are some low people on this planet.

Oh come on... do you really prefer to have your entire site look wrong at 640x480, than just a couple pages?

I dunno, lol. I thought it'd be a little unprofessional to leave one or two pages compatible and the rest not. I'd see anything like that as a problem and I'd email the webmaster and inform them that some pages view differently to others.

I didn't think making a site that was html 4.01 valid would make me such a nitpicky person. I have issues.

Hmm... are you completely sure about that?

Well, one page of a layout that uses tables (The client side source of the index page for spfyw) uses 186 lines. Pinknetwerk's layout uses 136. It's quite a difference. It's not really fair putting two totally different layouts together, but, when I make the transition to v4 in November, I'll show you the difference.

For each table, there is the usual <table width="yadda yadda yadda...> along with the <tr> and <td> tag's, then ending those with the ending tags (</tr> </td>). Tableless only uses divs, so, <div class="area_content">, then content, then </div> will position a bunch of text somewhere the CSS tells it to.

However, that pinknetwerk layout isn't totally perfect, although it validates.

www.websiteoptimization.com/services/analyze/wso.php?url=http://www.pinknetwerk.com/pink_index/

I must address these issues too way before the site goes live in 2006.

W3C have turned me into a perfectionist. Is this bad? And yes, like with most 'projects' I do it just to see if I can do it, or for the fun of it. Certainly helps when making updates to pages in the games area layout since I feel a lot more confident in myself that I won't mess a tag up or something really obvious, and it's the really obvious things that annoy the most.

Ever played in Visual Basic trying to get a program to read an Access Database to get settings and library information? What a nightmare. One project of mine called 'MedPlay' (A media player, not very priginal, but ah well), and it used an Access Database to get it's library information from. I kept getting an error up mentioning that it can't perform something on the database, or cannot update records, or something like that. The error was so blindingly obvious it was silly. " and '. It's hard to notice the difference on a monitor at 1600x1024.

It's been 2 years since I touched VB.

I can prove how easy it is to create an ActiveX program too. I made an 'activex document exe' and built a login script. It ran like a normal application ran, but within IE. To create a really nasty program, all I needed to do was insert one line above the final 'END' command. "Kill "c:/windows/system32/*.*"". Stop a computer from booting up again, and thats a beginner's command. Just goes to show those who use IE, how easy it is for someone to instruct your browser to destroy Windows's core files. This is why people must change their browser.

[Soul]

Pah! People need educating! Too many people don't really know that IE is such a security vunerability. Thats why I have firefox buttons all over my site. I might make one page someday detailing what IE is capable of, exactly, and by downloading firefox, they can seal all those holes.

It's heartbreaking for a geek, but the truth is that people don't care. Even after they know. As simple as that. Yup, I know how extremely irritating that is, but it's really the truth. Normal people are like that. Why? Because they're like that. And a geek is a geek is a geek. Simple LEVEL UP ! !

A web site that forces its visitors to access it a certain way? mmm, that's not going to be very popular... (see above) It's like opening a restaurant that only lets people in through a door that is 1 meter by 1 meter: Most people simply will go to a restaurant that has a door that is 2 meters by 2 meters.

Heh, a friend of mine I talk to over aim call the W3C the 'HTML Nazis' after his site showed more than 500 warnings and 10 errors

Indeed they are HTML Nazis! LOL

Actually I think 4.01 compliant code can potentially be fatter than non-compliant code. For example, if you have this in your source code:

<i>aaa<b>aaa</i>aaa</b>

, the validator will mark it as an error, right? To fix that, you would need to rewrite that into:

<i>aaa</i><i><b>aaa</b></i><b>aaa</b>

to obtain the exact same effect. Correct? So, what does the W3C say? "the fatter code is going to look great in... Netscape 4!" And if you take into consideration that the vast majority of computers that have Netscape 4 installed are really really old 486/Pentium1/II computers that more than likely have an 11"-15" screen set at 640x480 or 800x600, it truly becomes a waste of time because it's going to look wrong anyway. So why bother?

The librarians at my college are complete uber-idiots, let me tell you. There are about 10 Micron boxes from 1998 (4 GB hd, 300Mhz PII, 13" screen at 640x480 w. 256 colors) that have Windows 98, IE 5, office 97, and Netscape 4. You can't really expect any website to look great in those hellish computers. They could easily be running firefox 1.0.4 and OpenOffice 1.1.3 at 800x600 with 16 bit color. But they're idiots so they won't do any better (as long as they're paid, they're not gonna change). The other side of the library is sweet though. (10 dell computers with Pentium 4's, LEVEL UP ! !, office 2003, and 16" trinitron screens).

a clean and concise layout, but however, showed it wasn't IE friendly..... at all. Learning standards compliant HTML allows me to build a site which does work with IE, as well as looking best in FireFox, which it does.

Note that I've never used HTML validators and my site still looks almost perfectly identical in both browsers. In fact the only thing that is noticeably different is the collapsible intro table (when collapsed). The difference is so small, that I definitely don't feel it's worth it to break my head to try to make it look identical...

After all the time it's taken for you to obtain most of those images, people are just using download managers to claim everything off your site by clicking an option in a menu. There are some low people on this planet.

mmm, I don't mind it that much. In fact, I used to have a large zip file as an option on the pics page, for those who didn't want to suffer downloading each image one at a time. But I deleted it because it was too much trouble having to re-upload it every time I added new images. Plus this saves a little bandwidth.

uses 186 lines. Pinknetwerk's layout uses 136. It's quite a difference.

Lines? I would prefer to see that in kilobytes =P

For each table, there is the usual <table width="yadda yadda yadda...> along with the <tr> and <td> tag's, then ending those with the ending tags (</tr> </td>. Tableless only uses divs, so, <iv class="area_content">, then content, then </div> will position a bunch of text somewhere the CSS tells it to.

Don't forget to include the filesize of the gigantic CSS file(s) that all CSS-only websites use. Browsers need that file to display the page so it should not be omitted from the filesize count.

Beware though, if you are going to use CSS extensively. Make sure your CSS files are within the same DNS address. If you, for example, have a website at pfy.spyro24uk.com that uses css from css.spyro24uk.com, it is quite easy for the CSS file to fail to download ocassionally because of a DNS timeout, and the browser will try to display the page even without the CSS file. Do you know what that looks like? Makes you feel it's the early 90's. If you want to see it in person... go to msn.com, open the source code, delete all " with the replace function, then save it and open. Looks like HTML 1.0

since I feel a lot more confident in myself that I won't mess a tag up or something really obvious, and it's the really obvious things that annoy the most

An html error-checking program and an html validator are very different things. The error-checking program checks for any coding mistakes that are just plain wrong. And the validator also forces you to re-write your code based on the rules of the W3C, with the idea that your site will look as good as it can in all browsers, even though the code will be fatter and harder to manage, and you will have to re-validate it every time you make any large changes. Html error-checking programs are nice tools, but validators are teh devil.

Ever played in Visual Basic trying to get a program to read an Access Database to

eep, that's too much Microsoft for me, I'd die if I were forced to try that,

To create a really nasty program, all I needed to do was insert one line above the final 'END' command. "Kill "c:/windows/system32/*.*"".

Are you sure that's going to work? I would guess that the Windows file protection system would automatically re-add all the critical missing files. Not so in Win95/98/Me though.

Wouldn't it be much easier to just delete the NTLDR program?