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Posted by John Hosking on 02/17/07 01:08
robert maas, see http://tinyurl.com/uh3t wrote:
>>From: "Jonathan N. Little" <lws4...@centralva.net>
[attributions screwed up again, good luck]
>>
>>>I use a text-only browser because it's the **only** browser
>>>available to me. So fuck off with your stupid remarks about my
>>>motivation for using a text-only browser.
>>
>>I think you have it ass-backwards. If your document is for the *public*
>>(i.e., published to the Internet) then what *you* use for a browser is
>>not important. What *is* important is what your visitors will be using!
>
> What *I* use for a browser is entirely crucial to the development
> process. When I write come HTML, I have *no* way to see how it
> might look in some *other* browser I don't have access to. All I
> can see is how it looks in lynx, and what the validator says about
> it. If it seems correct as I design it, and if lynx agrees by
> presenting it the way I expected it to look, and if the validator
> says it's "correct", that's the very best I can do from here. I can
> only *hope* that it looks equally as-intended with other browsers.
>
> Now if I had access to somebody with another browser, who would
> tell me on a regular basis how it looked there, but I don't.
Robert, you sound like a home construction contractor who wants to build
homes for a living, but doesn't own a power saw, just a thin little
hacksaw which cuts just fine if you don't go too fast because if you do
then the blade overheats and so nobody should complain because a saw is
a saw and you've got yours.
The house will take longer to build but you don't seem to mind, and if
the walls are a little crooked here and there it's really the saw's
fault, because after all it's only a little hacksaw.
When you say, "I have no way to see how it might look in some other
browser," you're following in the footsteps of so many folks who
designed only for IE (or earlier, only for Netscape) because that's all
they had. Such pages are a plague on the Web still today. And folks who
code in that way (even for IE6, currently the most common browser out
there) in 2007 don't get much sympathy. Coding for Lynx only won't get
you many friends, or technical support.
>>So if this is for the Internet then your visitors, (even those
>>from 3rd-world countries) will using a CSS supporting, GUI based
>>browser! Even if you only access the web in Lynx your can design
>>and test your page local with <insert GUI browser of your choice>
>>then upload it when your done.
>
> I don't have access to any machine which has a GUI browser and also
> has a working modem that would allow me to upload anything. My laptop
> has a very very old (1999) version of NetScape, but no working
> modem. My Macintosh has a working modem, but no working GUI
> browser.
My recommendation is that you write the content and forget the
publishing part. When your work is done, somebody else can mark it up or
help you mark it up, and then publish it, or help you publish it *once*.
By that time, there may be a different constellation of Web standards,
available browsers, and equipment available to you.
There is no good reason for anybody (including yourself) to expect that
you can publish to the WWW (a largely graphical space based on data
access enabled by the electronic transmission of said data) without a
graphical browser and electronic transmission capability.
People can (and do) argue about specific lists all the time, but if you
can't or won't test in *at least* IE6 and a version of Firefox, you
shouldn't bother publishing. In any case, you have no place to whine
about things like the spacing after a <pre> element.
I hesitate to mention the tool at http://www.browsershots.org/ because
(1) while it can be very helpful it is not perfect and (2) it is still
in an alpha release. You might not get along with it.
--
John
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