site review request

[B McDonald]

http://www.galtsvalley.com

Hi all. I've recently made some major stylistic changes to my site and now
it is essentially a new design with some new CSS plumbing. I am hoping that
a few hardy souls can go check it out and tell me how it renders on their
platform/browser combos. I have tested it under W2K, WXP, and System 9 on a
Power Mac 8600:

W2K: IE5.5 and Opera 7.1 (some small issues in Opera)
WXP: IE6 and NS7.1 (in IE6 a strange jerkiness when clicking on links that
are not inline... bottom margins seem to collapse a bit...)
OS9/Mac: IE5.1 and NS6 (very good)

Reports on Mozilla, Firebird, other NS and IE versions, and later Mac
platforms most appreciated!

Brian

[Brian]

Barry Pearson wrote:

There is a difference between writing for a target audience and
writing for the masses.

There is a difference between writing for a target audience and not
caring whether your audience is capable of reading what you write.

There is a difference between claiming you know the hardware and
software profile of your audience, and actually knowing it.

--
Brian
follow the directions in my address to email me

[B McDonald]

Have you just finished reading Atlas Shrugged?

Mr. Shagnasty was good enough to offer up some explanation on the 800x600
theme after he stated it in his initial critique. I thank you for the links
too. Remember, I wasn't aware of the 800x600 problem before it was brought
to my attention. The point of this post was to discover the problems with my
site design. I initially protested the idea that I should care about the
display of my site in ultra-constrained viewports. I wondered why it affects
me. It was nice of all involved to explain to me why I would want to do such
a thing. Now the self-education begins.

The vast majority of readers misinterpret Atlas Shrugged.

Brian

[Brian]

B McDonald wrote:

Have you just finished reading Atlas Shrugged?
Can't say that I have.
Mr. Shagnasty was good enough to offer up some explanation on the 800x600
theme after he stated it in his initial critique. I thank you for the links
too.

You are quite welcome. Those faq entries themselves contain lots of
links, as well at some back and forth dialog, occasionally from ciwa*
regulars. I hope they help.

--
Best,
Brian
follow the directions in my address to email me

[Barry Pearson]

Brian wrote:

Barry Pearson wrote:

There is a difference between writing for a target audience and
writing for the masses.

There is a difference between writing for a target audience and not
caring whether your audience is capable of reading what you write.

There is a difference between claiming you know the hardware and
software profile of your audience, and actually knowing it.

There is an old military saying. Time spent in reconnaissance is never wasted.

It is important to try to find out such things. A lot of effort can be saved
by doing so. We may identify that only X% of extra users would be gained by
enabling a certain s/w & h/w profile to acces while a web site easily, while
more than X% extra users can be gained by some other means costing the same
amount, such as adding more content or promoting the site.

We may never be certain - either way. So we deal with uncertainty in the
various ways that businesses deal with uncertainty daily. We look at
probabilities and risks, etc. Then we make our decisions and accept the
consequences.

Some principles of marketing have served us well outside the web. They can
serve us well on the web too. And that especially concerns understanding the
potential audiences / customers / etc. It is obvious that we don't need to
serve everyone in the world. We need to understand who we DO need to serve,
and the trade-offs between extra cost v. extra customers.

Whatever web site we are developing, probably most web-accessing people in the
world are not plausibly in the target audience. And their problems are not our
problems. We may simply decide, for example, that people who don't speak
English are not in our target audience. We won't explicitly cater for them. We
won't even waste time thinking about whether they have suitable translation
capability. We may simply decide that non-English-speaking people are not our
problem.

This thread has talked about 800 x 600 screens. What would the discussion have
been if it had talked about 640 x 480 screens? Is there any plausible reason
for any web site developer to spend an extra minute thinking about the issues
of VGA screens? In many cases, I suggest not. Which suggests that we are
entirely valid if we decide whether or not we should cater for people with
particular sceen sizes.

--
Barry Pearson
http://www.Barry.Pearson.name/photography/
http://www.BirdsAndAnimals.info/
http://www.ChildSupportAnalysis.co.uk/

[B McDonald]

> This thread has talked about 800 x 600 screens. What would the discussion
have

been if it had talked about 640 x 480 screens? Is there any plausible reason for any web site developer to spend an extra minute thinking about the issues of VGA screens? In many cases, I suggest not. Which suggests that we are
entirely valid if we decide whether or not we should cater for people with
particular sceen sizes.

Thank you for expressing that point of view. And not that I've been seeking
any form of validation or even vindication. But I genuinely and
unantagonistica lly meant it when I asked why should I design for 800x600. It
was offered up as a site critique... perhaps (/perhaps/) a little
uncritically (sorry Mr. Shagnasty). But I've been all over this territory
before and I ultimately decided to shrink my goddam company header!

(wanna see? -- http://www.galtsvalley.com)

I'm getting around to doing what Brian suggested as well... even though he
treated me like an opposing soccer fan.

I am a man not a soccer ball!

Still, it sure was fun to talk about Pablo Neruda.

;-)

Brian

[Tina Holmboe]

"Barry Pearson" <ne**@childsupp ortanalysis.co. uk> exclaimed in <YB************ @newsfep1-gui.server.ntli .net>:

been if it had talked about 640 x 480 screens? Is there any plausible reason
for any web site developer to spend an extra minute thinking about the issues
of VGA screens? In many cases, I suggest not. Which suggests that we are

No, there is no plausible reason for any web site developer to spend any
extra time thinking about any resolution.

There are quite a few plausible reasons why the site developer should ONLY
spend time thinking about NO resolution.

But is there any point in repeating this, thread after thread ? I think
not.

--
- Tina Holmboe Greytower Technologies
ti**@greytower. net http://www.greytower.net/
[+46] 0708 557 905

[Tina Holmboe]

"Barry Pearson" <ne**@childsupp ortanalysis.co. uk> exclaimed in <0g************ *******@newsfep 2-win.server.ntli .net>:

My reading is that still nearly half of viewers have that size screen,
although the proportion is steadily reducing.
That's odd reading - there are no reliable statistics on the matter. What
exist doesn't count: it talks about the *resolution*, not the physical
reality[1].

Some say "design so that resolution doesn't matter". But that is hard when
images are being provided, whether GIF (or whatever) diagrams, or JPEG
photographs. Hard decisions have to be made - they are not flexible like text
We've been down this road before. I can only conclude, to my surprise, that
you don't read what we write.

If the CONTENT itself is 800 pixels wide, then there is nothing you can do
to make that fit 640. That has nothing what so ever to do with the
RESOLUTION on the client's monitor.

"Content" does not equal "current resolution of client monitor".

people. (Including low-speed-dial-up users! And I have been told that my
photographs are too small for broadband users with high-resolution screens!)
Same thing. If the CONTENT is x number of pixels, then it IS x number of
pixels. There is nothing contradictory about this.

We've allready discussed it. Problems arise when you take content which does
not have an inherent size and squeeze that content into a, by you, perceived
physical reality.[2]

Your image is not a problem.

Sometimes you just have to say "life's too short, this is my decision and I'll
live with it".

You're right. It is, of course, your choice whether you want to spend that
short life doing simple things in a complicated manner.

[1]
Aka the window size, if any.

[2]
"No boom today. Boom tomorrow"

--
- Tina Holmboe Greytower Technologies
ti**@greytower. net http://www.greytower.net/
[+46] 0708 557 905

[Beauregard T. Shagnasty]

B McDonald pounced upon this pigeonhole and pronounced:

Thank you for expressing that point of view. And not that I've been seeking
any form of validation or even vindication. But I genuinely and
unantagonistica lly meant it when I asked why should I design for 800x600. It
was offered up as a site critique... perhaps (/perhaps/) a little
uncritically (sorry Mr. Shagnasty). But I've been all over this territory
before and I ultimately decided to shrink my goddam company header!
Yay! <g>
(wanna see? -- http://www.galtsvalley.com)
It looks much better now, it floats, and even works perfectly at a browser
width of 640. Nice job. Tina says it well: think NO resolution.

Think fluid.
I'm getting around to doing what Brian suggested as well... even though he
treated me like an opposing soccer fan.

I am a man not a soccer ball!

<rof,l>

--
-bts
-This space intentionally left blank.

[Brian]

Barry Pearson wrote:

Brian wrote:

There is a difference between claiming you know the hardware and
software profile of your audience, and actually knowing it.

This wasn't answered in your post.
It is important to try to find out such things. A lot of effort can
be saved by doing so. We may identify that only X% of extra users
would be gained by enabling a certain s/w & h/w profile to acces
while a web site easily,
The question is not may, but can: "We can identify that only X%..."
Which leads to the question, can you? Reliably? How?
while more than X% extra users can be gained by some other means
costing the same amount, such as adding more content or promoting
the site.
Uh huh. How do we determine this?
We may never be certain - either way. So we deal with uncertainty
in the various ways that businesses deal with uncertainty daily.
We are stuck with uncertainty about the hardware and software profiles
of a site's would-be visitors. That's the only thing we of which can
be certain. Knowing that, isn't it prudent to not shut any of them out?
Some principles of marketing have served us well outside the web.
I've never been too keen on marketing types. They use a lot of
resources for no measurable gain.
It is obvious that we don't need to serve everyone in the world. We
need to understand who we DO need to serve, and the trade-offs
between extra cost v. extra customers.
There is no extra cost to creating a site that works on every
resolution. Why do you keep insisting that there is?
This thread has talked about 800 x 600 screens. What would the
discussion have been if it had talked about 640 x 480 screens?
The same. Don't shut out any potential visitors unnecessarily.
Is there any plausible reason for any web site developer to spend
an extra minute thinking about the issues of VGA screens?

I couldn't say it better than Tina Holmboe already did.

--
Brian
follow the directions in my address to email me

[Jonathan Snook]

"Brian" <us*****@mangym utt.com.invalid-remove-this-part> wrote in message
news:cy6fb.4825 36$Oz4.327033@r wcrnsc54...

There is no extra cost to creating a site that works on every
resolution. Why do you keep insisting that there is?

really? so, your site will work great on my PDA? all your images will show
without horizontal scroll?

Would you recommend that a site about photography have all images sized to
work on a PDA? What about a cell phone? Is that practical? I think not. I
would drop your site in a minute on my 1600x1200 screen.

Jonathan

--
http://www.snook.ca/