"Ruthsarian Layouts", anyone?

[Alan J. Flavell]

A colleague recently breezed in with a new web page design. He
didn't tell me where he got the ideas from, but ...

Looking at his stylesheets, I noticed they identified themselves
as "Ruthsarian Layouts". Google took me to
http://webhost.bridgew.edu/etribou/layouts/

We don't seem to have had any discussion here that mentioned them.
Anyone care to take a look, and share thoughts?

[Jan Roland Eriksson]

On Wed, 15 Sep 2004 19:14:33 +0100, "Alan J. Flavell"
<fl*****@ph.gla .ac.uk> wrote:
[...]

..."Ruthsari an Layouts". Google took me to
http://webhost.bridgew.edu/etribou/layouts/

That's a gold mine I'd say. Very Lynx friendly too.

Had a brief look at the CSS for these layouts, nice.
Gave me some ideas for a redesign of one of my web sites.

--
Rex

[Phil Evans]

Jan Roland Eriksson wrote:

On Wed, 15 Sep 2004 19:14:33 +0100, "Alan J. Flavell"
<fl*****@ph.gla .ac.uk> wrote:
[...]

..."Ruthsaria n Layouts". Google took me to
http://webhost.bridgew.edu/etribou/layouts/

That's a gold mine I'd say. Very Lynx friendly too.

Had a brief look at the CSS for these layouts, nice.
Gave me some ideas for a redesign of one of my web sites.

I agree, looks like a really useful site. I'm particularly intrigued by
his method of getting two columns to extend the entire height of the
viewport: he has fixed position divs with a low z-index which the site
chrome masks out, apart from the column content. See
http://webhost.bridgew.edu/etribou/l...eta/index.html,
it's a little hard to describe ;)

P

[Andreas Prilop]

On Wed, 15 Sep 2004, Alan J. Flavell wrote:

Looking at his stylesheets, I noticed they identified themselves
as "Ruthsarian Layouts".

What does this word mean? "Ruthsarian "?

[Alan J. Flavell]

On Thu, 16 Sep 2004, Andreas Prilop wrote:

What does this word mean? "Ruthsarian "?

I took it to be somebody's name.

[Stan Brown]

"Alan J. Flavell" <fl*****@ph.gla .ac.uk> wrote in
comp.infosystem s.www.authoring.stylesheets:

A colleague recently breezed in with a new web page design. He
didn't tell me where he got the ideas from, but ...

Looking at his stylesheets, I noticed they identified themselves
as "Ruthsarian Layouts". Google took me to
http://webhost.bridgew.edu/etribou/layouts/

The descriptions all say "XHTML 1.1". I thought the general opinion
here was not to use XHTML for general-purpose Web pages.

--
Stan Brown, Oak Road Systems, Tompkins County, New York, USA
http://OakRoadSystems.com/
HTML 4.01 spec: http://www.w3.org/TR/html401/
validator: http://validator.w3.org/
CSS 2.1 spec: http://www.w3.org/TR/CSS21/
validator: http://jigsaw.w3.org/css-validator/

[Jan Roland Eriksson]

On Fri, 17 Sep 2004 22:57:50 -0400, Stan Brown
<th************ @fastmail.fm> wrote:

"Alan J. Flavell" <fl*****@ph.gla .ac.uk> wrote in
comp.infosyste ms.www.authoring.stylesheets:

A colleague breezed in with a new web page design. [...]Looking at his stylesheets, I noticed they identifiedthemselves as "Ruthsarian Layouts"...

[...]

http://webhost.bridgew.edu/etribou/layouts/

The descriptions all say "XHTML 1.1". I thought the general opinion
here was not to use XHTML for general-purpose Web pages.

I have only made a snapshot on validity but as it seems, the designer
has used the XHTML1.1 prolog but then in his markup stayed on what is
available in XHTML1.0 plus its "browser compatibility guidelines".

Never the less, it may not be the markup that is of most interest here
and I have not found a place where he is resorting to pure markup abuse.

I think most people will admit that he has done a hell of a good job
with his CSS suggestions, and provided CSS examples that are useable
without resorting to "reversed flow" of info on his pages.

Most of his pages are logically readable in Lynx as a fact, an
achievement worth mentioning in it self these days.

Still you are right of course; he did not have to go to XHTML1.1 to
create what he has done, straight HTML4.01 would have been enough and
the CSS would have worked just as good.

--
Rex

[Alan J. Flavell]

On Tue, 21 Sep 2004, Jan Roland Eriksson wrote:

Most of his pages are logically readable in Lynx as a fact, an
achievement worth mentioning in it self these days.
Indeed.
Still you are right of course; he did not have to go to XHTML1.1 to
create what he has done, straight HTML4.01 would have been enough and
the CSS would have worked just as good.

In my role as the Original Poster ;-) , having asked the question
without offering any answers, I suppose I ought to expose my own
opinions.

I thought the styles were a treasure-house of ideas, and the practical
results I rated as impressive. I was initially upset by the
undersized fonts, relative (of course) to my chosen default (a topic
on which some of us have rather strongly held opinions), but once I'd
got over that, and fretted somewhat over the rather large number of
stylesheets that were involved, I certainly warmed to the attention to
detail which the author had put in.

Like other commentators, I couldn't see any point in declaring
XHTML/1.1 (in fact, according to the W3C it would seem to be wrong to
advertise XHTML/1.1 and to serve it out as text/html at all! Maybe
they'll get their trademark lawyers to send out threatening letters in
due course). But this is fortunately irrelevant to the stylesheets
aspect of the matter.

(Myself, I still can't see the point in XHTML/1.0 sent out under the
provisions of Appendix C, since HTML/4.01 is defined to be
functionally equivalent - and is better supported by browsers. But
fortunately, that's not the issue here, so I suppose it would be
better to rule it OT for the group - OK?)