Neil Jones' posts, page 622

Compliant or not Compliant

To view HTML code:

Go to a web page, right-click and choose "View Source", or appropriate option. Try it now.

The HTML code is not supposed to be seen as such (although that in itself doesn't justify those annoying "no right click" scripts), it's just code to tell the browser how to show the page.

The Hidden Hearing Ad

I beg to differ. Couldn't look anymore American styled if it tried

Compliant or not Compliant

Hmm, I do question the excess presence of this sort of stuff:

[code:1:1e04b564e8] <tr>
<td width="20" height="12" style="font-family: Tahoma; font-size: 8.5pt; color: #FFCC00" align="center"></td>
<td width="182" height="12" style="font-family: Tahoma; font-size: 8.5pt; color: #FFCC00" align="center">
</td>
<td width="19" height="12" style="font-family: Tahoma; font-size: 8.5pt; color: #FFCC00" align="center"></td>
<td width="17" height="12" style="font-family: Tahoma; font-size: 8.5pt; color: #FFCC00"></td>
</tr>[/code:1:1e04b564e8]

Not really any point setting styles up for an empty cell... Just as quick to do a Find & Replace in Wordpad and replace it with:

[code:1:1e04b564e8]<td>&nbsp;</td>[/code:1:1e04b564e8]

Likewise for cells with images on the background. (Netscape 4 refused to show a background image in a table cell if there was no content in it)

Apart from that it isn't as bad code wise as some sites, although the same arguments can be applied here on the FONT tags as I outlined earlier in this thread.

Keeping Up Appearances

These are shown every so often on Sundays - there's an episode today at 12:30 on BBC One.

The Hidden Hearing Ad

Oh I've seen that one, is it the infomerial one with the lady who claims to be wearing such a thing while doing the links for the infomercial?

Challenge are particularly fond of showing this at mealtimes, just the sort of thing you want to see, vibrating flab (wouldn't mind so much if it wasn't the same zooming in piece of film used four times throughout the infomercial).

Compliant or not Compliant

Okay, say you run an online shop. Let's say you have 1000 visitors a month. You say designing for IE is an ideal situation wiht 95% share. So you're prepared to turn away the custom of 50 users each month just because they don't use Internet Explorer. So each year you're turning away the custom of 600 users because your site only looks pretty in Internet Explorer.

And how about non Windows systems? Microsoft are discontinuing IE on the Mac apparently. You not accepting Mac users' business in your online shop due to the wrong browser or wrong operating system?

Compliant or not Compliant

I think the point was that you can shave quite a lot of HTML content off the original page which saves bandwith/data transfer which in turn saves you money on the hosting of the site.

I mean, it might only look like:

[code:1:7529841dc0]<font face="Trebuchet MS" size="2"></font>[/code:1:7529841dc0]

which is only 42 bytes in itself but if you was to do this:

[code:1:7529841dc0]
<style type="text/css">
<!--
P { font-family: "Trebuchet MS", Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;
font-size: 13px;
}
-->
</style>
[/code:1:7529841dc0]

Then instead of writing this:

[code:1:7529841dc0]<font face="Trebuchet MS" size="2">Regional News pages are brought up-to-date with images and
video footage of current presentation.&nbsp; <b>Updates:</b> East, Midlands,
North, NE &amp; Cumbria and Wales revised.</font>[/code:1:7529841dc0]

You just need this:

[code:1:7529841dc0]<p>Regional News pages are brought up-to-date with images and
video footage of current presentation.&nbsp; <b>Updates:</b> East, Midlands,
North, NE &amp; Cumbria and Wales revised.</font>[/code:1:7529841dc0]

Might only save 42 bytes per paragraph but multiply that by the number of paragraphs across the entire site (let's say 500 paragraphs) = 42*500 = 20.5k (rounded)

So now, for each visitor, they're saving 20.5k. Now say you have 500 visitors a month. 20.5 * 500 = 10Mb. (rounded).

That's 120Mb of data transfer a year that you save in this example alone.

Of course, can always save more data transfer with optimised images and so on but this is an example.

The Beano thinks TV wasn't around in 1938!

Most likely set in its long-running area of "Beanotown", location of which could honestly be anywhere. But from the strips, it would appear to be some far-flung village somewhere which rules out London full-stop.

News 24 Ticker

Only because more people watch the BBC anyway, as the News at Ten/When ratings constantly show. And that's only 60% of those polled - who knows how many people they asked? Perhaps most of those asked don't have Sky Digital or Freeview or Cable so when it comes down to it there's really only two choices - BBC or ITN (split three ways for ITV, Ch4 and Five).

Sky News gets my vote anyway - more interesting for a start with decent presenters, good use of the newswall (both for the powerpoint type presentations and backdrop effects) and just general speediness (plus it was first and the Beeb only set theirs up in the first place to prove that they could do something similiar)

I found this independent review of News 24 from 2002 which seems relevant to this thread - it's a PDF file viewed as HTML through Google's cache:

Google Cache

Original PDF File

You've Been Framed

I like the idea of the new style of the show as outlined here but I have to agree that I think the previous format was getting a bit tired.

How many times has Denis Norden told us that his clips are "brand new" and how many of them actually were? I wonder if it'll be the same story here?

Roll on September and lets have a look

Closed TV Stations

This used to be one of the FAQs on Paramount Text I recall, or at least it was answered in this way at least a few dozen times in PText's Mailbox section.

Paramount has, as said, never claimed to be Nick at Night. It's probably because Paramount used to start at 7pm straight after Nick finished that people thought it was Nick at Night. You'd have thought by now surely that as Paramount now broadcasts pretty much all day and Nick is also on air up to 11pm on its Replay Channel, it'd be pretty obvious that it can't be Nick at Night?

Timeshifted Channels

I don't see much point in some +1 channels really because if you wait long enough anyway, the same material comes up again in a different timeslot on the main channel anyway.

Key examples include Fox Kids, Nickelodeon and the Disney Channel. All their programmes are repeats anyway - none of them need more one showing a day let alone two hours to understand - how many times has Clarissa Explains It All (A Nick US prog from 1991) gone round through Nick UK by now for example? Same with Mellisa Joan Hart's other ventures.

Having said that though, other types of material is more suited I think to the +1 era. Like the History Channel where if you get distracted by the phone, you won't understand the entire story. So catch the missing bits next hour. I'd say the same for the Biography channel if they had one but I never know who half the people are who they show bios of.