Posted by dorayme on 11/08/07 20:40

In article <13j6irgpbt0sh4e@corp.supernews.com>,
mbstevens <NOXwebmasterx@xmbstevensx.com> wrote:

> dorayme wrote:
> > In article <13j5f4djrkk9213@corp.supernews.com>,
> > mbstevens <NOXwebmasterx@xmbstevensx.com> wrote:
> >
> >> dorayme wrote:
> >>> In article <13j5b6j72c0ahfc@corp.supernews.com>,
> >>> mbstevens <NOXwebmasterx@xmbstevensx.com> wrote:
> >>>
> >>>> Nik Coughlin wrote:
> >>>>
> >>>>> I believe that this is the minimum amount of markup necessary to
> >>>>> achieve
> >>>>> this effect :) Would love to be proven wrong.
> >>>>>
> >>>>>
> >>>> Is the effect worth the internal complexity?
> >>> Depends on how you count it. It only has to be done once by the
> >>> author, and from then on it can give multiple pleasure. On
> >>> principle, this may well be worth it.

>
> I see a kind of smooth scale from pure semantic markup to
> clog dancing monkeys. Different people place different points along that
> scale where you should just control yourself, or switch over
> to Flash or Java Applets. I would resist using the kind of code here
> because I would not want to maintain it, and I just find its appearance
> unneeded aesthetically. Of course you have to occasionally give in
> to clients. (This is also my answer to Andy's reply.)

You have to abstract from particular cases. In plain terms, this
means that you cannot know in advance that it is not worth an
author's time for any site at all. Perhaps we need more examples
of the actual use of code that gets tut tuts from some but which
are plainly nice in effect and hard or impossible to do without.

The fair and substantial complaints are for sites that

(1) Look bloody awful anyway

(2) Work badly in other respects, partly as a result of an
authors over attention to the fancy at the expense of the very
important and unarguable criteria like decent font sizes, screen
flexibility and so on. (Lemme point out that the effect of the
OP's interesting attempts is to at least avoid the often unwanted
fixed nature of images when they are for decoration, this is a
positive for fluid construction).

About maintenance, there are several issues. If an author is in
command of what he has done then it may be very easy for *him* to
maintain it. As for the business of others taking over the site
to maintain it, a sense of perspective is needed. Many of these
fancy things can be commented by the author so the next person
can understand, the commentary might even explain how to dispense
with the fancy parts altogether. Then it is the choice of the new
person (if he has the authority).

--
dorayme

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