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Posted by John Hosking on October 22, 2007, 2:28 am
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Corey Walker wrote:
>
> I'm curious as to what people think of the following site:
> http://www.reaps.org/compost/nervous-system.html .
The page looks nice when it loads. Very Webby.
A sans-serif font (not Verdana) might be better for the bodytext. Some
say (and argue at length) that sans-serif typefaces are easier to read
online, while serif fonts are better for paper. I haven't done any
studies of my own but I've grown accustomed to sans-serif on the WWW.
I think I'm still unconvinced you need XHTML markup instead of HTML, but
enough about that.
Your stylesheets don't need the HTML comment delimiters; remove them.
I believe p {text-align: left;} is the same as all browsers' default
(for English), so this rule looks superfluous to me.
You have an <h3> and an <h4> in your markup, but no <h1> or <h2>, so I
suspect you chose those elements for their default rendered sizes in
your browser. Semantically, they aren't the 3rd- and 4th-level headings
on the page, so you're "lying" about the content, IYSWIM.
Some people (many of them named Jukka) like the idea of borders around
images which are used for links, so they will like the borders around
the W3C logos at the bottom of the page. Personally, I think those
images look mangled with the borders around them.
However, lots of folks point out that no regular user will care about
your page's validation or support of the W3C (the connection with the
W3C to worms is a separate discussion), so feel free to remove them (and
yes, I know, it hurts after all the work it took to get that first page
to validate, but we're proud of you anyway, and so's your mom).
This code, marked as a paragraph:
<p>
<a href="index.html"> Back to REAPS Programs </a>
<br></br><a href="reproductive-system.html"> Reproductive System </a>
</p>
is more like a couple of items in a list:
<ul>
<li><a href="index.html">Back to REAPS Programs </a></li>
<li><a href="reproductive-system.html"> Reproductive System </a></li>
</ul>
> This is a page I
> designed back in 2005 from scratch and tweaked it until the code was
> rendered valid. This was my first ever page that I could put the valid
> symbol on, and it was my first experiment with CSS. Admittedly, I copied
> the CSS code from a government web page, and just modified it a bit to
> work for us. I would appreciate your comments, but please don't trash
> me; I'm still learning.
No trash; HTH. :-)
> If you have suggestions for improving the markup, I'd like to hear it.
> I doubt that the background is defined, but I can easily add that in.
>
No, no; already done:
body {
background:#ffffff;
color:#000000;
}
Delete the extraneous spaces and use this rule for your other pages.
--
John
Pondering the value of the UIP: http://improve-usenet.org/
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Posted by André Gillibert on October 22, 2007, 2:21 pm
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John Hosking wrote:
>
> A sans-serif font (not Verdana) might be better for the bodytext.
No, the user default font should be used. I don't see any reason why the
user default wouldn't be ok for this page. That's not as if a specific
font was needed for pretty presentation purpose.
> Some say (and argue at length) that sans-serif typefaces are easier to
> read online, while serif fonts are better for paper.
Those people just have to set their default font as sans-serif. That's
what I did.
> Some people (many of them named Jukka) like the idea of borders around
> images which are used for links,
So, they just need to set it in their user CSS. For example, I set a
magenta border for image maps in my user CSS.
> However, lots of folks point out that no regular user will care about
> your page's validation or support of the W3C.
I agree. It's as if you wrote at the end of your book "tested grammar
errors free!".
People for whom grammar matters, don't need the logo to appreciate the
code quality.
In addition to John Hosking comments, I suggest to either remove the two
W3C logos or to put them in an unordered list rather than a table.
Other nitpickings:
The alt attribute of the img element is not used correctly. It should be a
replacement for the image as this should be shown in a user agent that
doesn't support images. Since the worm anatomy is the central part of the
site, it's important to let the user know the worm's anatomy. A longdesc
attribute should be used here.
If Corey Walker don't want a longdesc, the comment about the image
contents should be put into brackets like that: [Worm's anatomy drawing].
This will indicate that an image is available here, and may encourage some
users to see it, even if it's not easy to see it with their system.
--
If you've a question that doesn't belong to Usenet, contact me at
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Posted by Jeff Gaines on October 21, 2007, 6:49 pm
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>BTW, two weeks ago I suggested defining a background color, but your site
>still lacks such a definition. Something like this in the CSS:
As a complete newb to HTML may I ask a question on this please?
I read 'somewhere' (and I've read so much recently I can't remember where)
that the background should not be coloured as some people have their PC's
set up with specific colours due to visual impairment. Does that make any
sense? I run XP and I experimented with background colours on the PC and
found that IE7 does indeed follow the system settings.
--
Jeff Gaines Damerham Hampshire UK
If it's not broken, mess around with it until it is
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Posted by John Hosking on October 21, 2007, 7:18 pm
Please log in for more thread options Jeff Gaines wrote:
>
> I read 'somewhere' (and I've read so much recently I can't remember
> where) that the background should not be coloured as some people have
> their PC's set up with specific colours due to visual impairment. Does
> that make any sense? I run XP and I experimented with background colours
> on the PC and found that IE7 does indeed follow the system settings.
>
Well, if you respect your site visitors, you will want to give them as
much control as they need or want over how they view your site. That's
part of what's behind the argument against using font sizes in px or
setting a fixed width for a page.
So ideally (theoretically), you can let the user's browser defaults
determine fonts and FG colors and BG colors. But in practice, that
doesn't always work, because a world of black-only text on white-only
backgrounds isn't as exciting as one with other colors. Corporate logos
and charts and graphics can all provide reason for using other colors,
so a bit of suggestion from a site designer can be appropriate, too.
In the case of the OP's site (by way of example) the previous volunteer
designer (he of the over-ambitious Frankenspans) used a bunch of
graphics which showed black texts on white backgrounds. These look okay
for visitors who have black-on-white set in their browsers. For anyone
else, though, it looks dopey, because they might have, say, a light blue
BG, and the white-BG graphics are just clumpy and ugly.
The OP's pages I looked at earlier seem to be offline now, but the
publications.html page is still visible and shows texts in blue and
green. These wouldn't look too bad on a white BG, but aren't so easy to
read against my browser's blue BG. The header banner graphic also
doesn't match well. He set the FG colors because he thought they'd look
nice, but he assumed a white BG to go with them.
In summary, avoid setting colors if you don't have to, but if you do
have to set them (because of the elements you've chosen), set both a BG
and FG color to ensure a good contrast and accessibility for everyone.
Users with good browsers can still use !important rules in their user
stylesheets to override your site's suggested colors if they have to.
--
John
Pondering the value of the UIP: http://improve-usenet.org/
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Posted by Corey Walker on October 22, 2007, 1:10 am
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>
> The OP's pages I looked at earlier seem to be offline now, but the
> publications.html page is still visible and shows texts in blue and
> green. These wouldn't look too bad on a white BG, but aren't so easy to
> read against my browser's blue BG. The header banner graphic also
> doesn't match well. He set the FG colors because he thought they'd look
> nice, but he assumed a white BG to go with them.
They're not offline. The URL's I gave at that time were there working
addresses. Once they're finished, I move them where I want them. Try:
http://www.reaps.org/publications/castings/ .
This is interesting, because before I started posting to this forum I
never knew people could set their browser to have different background
colours. I like having colourful pages and was tired of the dreary black
and white look, so I did what lots of web designers have done, and tried
to create each paragraph with a different colour. So, how do I
accomplish my desired effect (a multi-coloured page), so that it works
for people with non-default background colours. There must be a way of
making both worlds happy. At least, I hope there is.
Corey
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