Compliant or not Compliant

It's not me not doing a very good job it's me doing a point proving rush job .

Now with regards to the top menu I quote myself.


I just couldn't be bothered to fiddle about with the thing as I was tired.

It is definately possible to get it looking (nearly) identical but it would take a lot of work and time. If I had really wanted to play with it I would have removed the tables completly.

Plus regarding the heights of the tables - height="" is not actually allowed as an (X)HTML tag when it comes to tables so I changed it to a line break with a certain height.

Actually looking again at the design in IE6/Mozilla I'm going to argue with you. The gaps in some places are actually slightly smaller and the menu isn't too dreadful looking. Plus when you say "the lines" do you mean the grey background? They are now generated through the CSS. So it's most likely a browser problem.

You are not perchance using IE5 are you? If you are I refer you to
http://www.alistapart.com/stories/tohell/
--
hmm - I've just noticed that the menubar on the real site has now changed to plain text but without the changing backgrund colours.

Quite what your point is I'm not sure.

For one thing, the page takes just as long to load as my own version - dependent again on the download of the images featured on the page - which is only natural.

Secondly, your version is quite simply, bloody awful looking. If I were 'trying to prove a point', I think I'd set about it in a much more convincing manner.

You're quite right on one front however. It clearly does take a 'lot of work and time'. I am in the business of updating pages and creating designs in a very short timeframe. I don't have the time required to piss about with CSS.

And yes, the main site menu panel has been adjusted, bringing the format into line with what is in place on TV Room +. I want to emphasise more the presence of ITV 2 and E4 as well as having a more meaningful entry for TV Room +. I didn't fancy having to adjust all those little images again...and get all the widths just right.

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 things that shocks me is that the people pushing for the re-coding haven't got anything better to do than to trawl through The TV Room.

Neil said it perfectly - you can get the same look with far less code.



erm I don't see why people are saying this because
http://www.hymagumba.freeserve.co.uk/uploads/the-tv-room-compare.png

to me it looks pretty much the same. (Notice that the flash won't load on the original due to the lack of the rest of the code).

That is of course you are refering to the size of the gaps in IE. In that case the site did and still looks bloody awful in Mozilla and Opera and most likely anything that isn't IE. As IE has been thrown into Standards Compliant mode by the working doctype it now renders more closely to the other two.

If that is the cardinal sin then it's my fault for using Mozilla to look at the original.

Plus I've been reformatting my old PC and had a look at both versions in IE4 - Yes Internet Explorer 4 from 1997.

thetvroom.com - half of it didn't show and was all in Times New Roman (see below)
my edit - looked very close to the one I had in Mozilla on my XP machine and had the right fonts.

The fonts issue I've just realised would be because my version has
"Trebuchet MS", "Arial", sans-serif
whereas the current font tags have just Treb. As I hadn't installed Office the machine didn't have Trebuchet and as there was no backup went to TNR.

Internet Explorer has 95% market saturation, and so designing for Internet Explorer is the ideal situation.

And as for FrontPage, the new version of FP coming up is a much welcome improvement. Many people who dis FrontPage think back to the original or even Frontpage express.

correct


incorrect.

There are several reasons for this. Say you were running a shop. 95% of people in your locale are white so you turn away all black/asian/orange people or give them the bottles of Coca -Cola with the lables falling off and torn.

Remember that only a few years ago Netscape had 95& share and therefore designing for Netscape was the ideal solution - who cared about this Explorer nonsense.

Microsoft have already said that standalone IE is dead so by the time Longhorn with IE7 comes out IE6 will be 8 years out of date.

Now this is part of the reason I prattle on about this. By using standards compliant stuff and CSS you can cater for everyone with slim code and no complex code forks. ( i do hope you read the two articles I liked to).

I'll use my website as an example. It displays everywhere because I didn't write it was a website for display in a broswer. I wrote it as a structured document to be decorated.

In Mozilla it displays perfectly and does everything I want it to. In IE6 and Opera it displays nearly perfectly with only two or three minor bugs to do with prettiness. In IE4/5 is displays although the more advanced things don;t work and it looks messier. In Netscape 4 which is dreadful it ignores the CSS and displays as a page of plain text which has proper headings and a navigation system down the page. Plus it will also display on phones/pdas/things for blind people.

Now of course The TV Room is a glossy visual site with loads of videos and pictures so it is different but that doesn't mean this shouldn't appply aswell.

Look at www.espn.com or www.csszengarden.com - all done in standards compliant CSS and they are both stunning so it is possible.



The last version I've used was 97 but they still spit out dodgy code. I'll wait for 2003 and download it off the internet to see if it's any good.

Well I use Frontpage, I have no complaints over it. It does occasionally add bits of code you don't need, but I know that with a few quick clicks they'll be gone.

You make me want to cry.

Its true i'm afraid...

WinInformant Article on IE's Market Domination

I am well aware of that and never disputed it - but why should you ignore everything else?

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?