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Posted by John Hosking on 02/18/07 13:27
Joel Shepherd wrote:
> John Hosking <John@DELETE.Hosking.name.INVALID> wrote:
>
>>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.
>
> Huh? What on earth prevents one from writing and publishing a plain ol'
> HTML document, with text content and simple, non-graphical markup, to
> the Web, with a plain ol' dial-up connection? Sure, you're not going to
> build another Amazon that way, and no one is going to give your site a
> reward for prettiness, but so what. You can still publish useful content
> in an accessible way.
>
>>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.
>
> Exactly what is there to "test" with <p>, <h1>, <strong> and the like?
> You don't need a graphical browser to "test" a basic page with textual
> content; and there's absolutely nothing prohibiting one from publishing
> such a page. Depending on the content, such a page could be far more
> useful and information-rich than most of the ad-, flash-, ajax- and
> image-laden crap swirling around out there.
I did not make myself understood. My words were poorly chosen, too
generalized in my attempt to keep things simple.
I am not suggesting that pages (of the OP or anyone else) need to be
slick, snazzy, flashy, Flashy, or animated. I require no particular
abundance of color. Simple is just fine with me, and has been from about
the fifth week of my experience with the web.
What I meant to do was to reply to the OP's obstinate insistence that
only *his* browser environment was important for his pages. You snipped
the part of his message that I was responding to (and there were other
exchanges further upstream), but he was giving what I saw as excuses for
why he couldn't possibly *know* what IE users saw because he only has
the one computer with what I presume to be 5 1/4" single-sided floppy
drives and a flaky 300 baud modem. I inferred that since he couldn't
*possibly* know what graphical browsers showed he thought he didn't need
to *care*.
None of that would matter if he wasn't getting all uptight about what
*his* Lynx browser -- not any version of IE, or Firefox, or Opera, or
Safari, etc., because I believe he said somewhere in this god-forsaken
thread that they didn't matter to him -- on his VT100 did spatially with
the <pre> element.
I admit to a withering despair concerning our brother Robert and I
thought the best advice would be for him to concentrate as best he can
on one thing (his text) before shifting his attention to one other thing
(appropriate, valid markup). When he's managed that, he can then move on
to the next thing (putting it online). A dispersion of concentration
seems to be detrimental to reaching his goals.
As you say, testing "<p>, <h1>, <strong> and the like" wouldn't
ordinarily be a big deal, but the OP is all tangled up with the "extra"
spacing from <p> tags [sic] and <pre> elements, so he'll probably want
to spend time "testing" the look of these on his paleo-browser and,
potentially, browsers that the rest of the planet might use.
In closing, I agree wholeheartedly that such a page could be far more
useful and information-rich than the common crud. I hope his work is
fruitful.
--
John
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