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Author Topic: Suggestions for the web site review requesters and critics  (Read 11274 times)

Chris_T

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Suggestions for the web site review requesters and critics
« on: January 30, 2010, 02:45:25 pm »

FACTS: It is currently impossible to design a web page that will display *exactly* the same across all browsers, revisions, platforms and window sizes. Measures to alleviate these differences, or to cause graceful degradation, do exisit. But many designs do not include them. If a design does not include such measures, it may appear and/or behave *very* differently in some permutations.

SUGGESTION to reviewers: Provide some context that your comments are based on, i.e. *your* viewing browser, version, platform and window size.

SUGGESTION to review requesters: *Before* posting your request (actually, before paying your designer or launching your site), use one of the following tools that "Creates screen captures of web pages loaded in any browser, any version, any operating system, with or without Flash, any window size." You would get a sense of how your site looks like on a wide range of viewers' computers. Pay your designer and launch your site only when you are happy with how your site looks not only to yourself, but to the world.

http://www.browsercam.com
http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/browserlab/
http://www.browserseal.com/
http://browsershots.org/

Designing a site that displays well for a limited permutations of platform+browser+version+window_size is relatively easy, while designing one that displays well across all (or at least the most popular ones that you care about) permutations is far from trivial. The ability to do the latter is what separates the men/women from the boys/girls in the world of web designers. You will find that only a very small percentage of web desingers, web design sites, or templates will make that claim.
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Eric Myrvaagnes

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Suggestions for the web site review requesters and critics
« Reply #1 on: January 30, 2010, 07:20:14 pm »

Excellent advice as always.

Eric

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EduPerez

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Suggestions for the web site review requesters and critics
« Reply #2 on: February 03, 2010, 04:36:54 am »

SUGGESTION (¿PLEAD?) to web designers: there are standards, and Microsoft did not create them; just because your HTML soup looks good on your version of Internet Explorer / Windows, it does not mean that it is correct and everybody else is wrong. Please, first create your work following the standards, then adapt it to the glitches that all platforms have; no the other way around.

End Of Rant
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Eric Myrvaagnes

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Suggestions for the web site review requesters and critics
« Reply #3 on: February 03, 2010, 10:21:09 am »

Quote from: EduPerez
SUGGESTION (¿PLEAD?) to web designers: there are standards, and Microsoft did not create them; just because your HTML soup looks good on your version of Internet Explorer / Windows, it does not mean that it is correct and everybody else is wrong. Please, first create your work following the standards, then adapt it to the glitches that all platforms have; no the other way around.

End Of Rant

Absolutely. IE is the last browser I'd test anything on. Make sure it works on Firefox, Opera, Safari, Chrome, and then, if you are masochistic,  check on IE. Latest versions of all, of course.


Eric

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fredjeang

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Suggestions for the web site review requesters and critics
« Reply #4 on: February 05, 2010, 04:09:04 pm »

Quote from: EduPerez
SUGGESTION (¿PLEAD?) to web designers: there are standards, and Microsoft did not create them; just because your HTML soup looks good on your version of Internet Explorer / Windows, it does not mean that it is correct and everybody else is wrong. Please, first create your work following the standards, then adapt it to the glitches that all platforms have; no the other way around.

End Of Rant
I agree!
It also would be verrrryyy nice if camera makers could apply to their raw files the DNG standard...

Fred.
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fabthi

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Re: Suggestions for the web site review requesters and critics
« Reply #5 on: February 02, 2011, 05:14:26 am »

One of the most useful post I ever found since ages!!!!!
 I just had to spend quite an amount of time checking my website appearance on different devices after some folks told me they had troubles in viewing it..
thanks Chris_T  ;)

Fabio
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EduPerez

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Re: Suggestions for the web site review requesters and critics
« Reply #6 on: February 02, 2011, 06:55:53 am »

One of the most useful post I ever found since ages!!!!!
 I just had to spend quite an amount of time checking my website appearance on different devices after some folks told me they had troubles in viewing it..
thanks Chris_T  ;)

Fabio

... yet you missed the first step in a validation process: "Markup Validation of http://www.imaginevenice.com/ - W3C Markup Validator".
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fabthi

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Re: Suggestions for the web site review requesters and critics
« Reply #7 on: February 02, 2011, 10:10:05 am »

... yet you missed the first step in a validation process: "Markup Validation of http://www.imaginevenice.com/ - W3C Markup Validator".

Hi
I know that, I already made that check but the folks at SmugMug (the platform where my site is installed) keep saying it's alright...What should I do? I am not sure those are html sections where I can put my hands.
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EduPerez

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Re: Suggestions for the web site review requesters and critics
« Reply #8 on: February 02, 2011, 10:54:12 am »

Hi
I know that, I already made that check but the folks at SmugMug (the platform where my site is installed) keep saying it's alright...What should I do? I am not sure those are html sections where I can put my hands.

If you cannot modify the "offending" parts, then I guess there is nothing you can do... it sucks.

Most serious issue is probably the unclosed DIV tag (some browsers can get crazy with that); are you sure there isn't and extra DIV opening somewhere in the part you can edit?. Then I would try to go for the undefined attributes / elements (ALIGN, COLOR, FONT): some browsers may honour them, while other browsers may ignore them.
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Justinr

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Re: Suggestions for the web site review requesters and critics
« Reply #9 on: February 02, 2011, 12:13:56 pm »

Standards are one thing but they will not make up for the difference in screens. I test sites over 5 browsers and three sets of hardware and a photo will look completely different in each screen no matter whether it's the same browser or not. As pointed out already, displaying images over the internet sucks.

I am rather puzzled as to why it's considered that there are 'men' and 'boys' in the web design business. Photographers can be bad enough in trying to elevate their their professionalism over the 'the others' but web designers in my sad experience are in a class of their own when it comes to egos.
« Last Edit: February 02, 2011, 12:16:18 pm by Justinr »
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fabthi

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Re: Suggestions for the web site review requesters and critics
« Reply #10 on: February 02, 2011, 12:22:45 pm »

Ehm...just to keep focused on this last issue (validation errors):
what are the most important practical consequencies of these validation errors? Specifically, are they influencing web findability? Or SEO? Or, what else?
In short, do I have to worry about this?
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popnfresh

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Re: Suggestions for the web site review requesters and critics
« Reply #11 on: February 02, 2011, 01:00:21 pm »

I'm more interested in critiquing photographs than website design anyway.
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EduPerez

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Re: Suggestions for the web site review requesters and critics
« Reply #12 on: February 03, 2011, 10:11:17 am »

Ehm...just to keep focused on this last issue (validation errors):
what are the most important practical consequencies of these validation errors? Specifically, are they influencing web findability? Or SEO? Or, what else?
In short, do I have to worry about this?

Browsers are notable for rendering valid code differently...
trying to obtain the same results, across different browsers, with invalid code is much harder.
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Justinr

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Re: Suggestions for the web site review requesters and critics
« Reply #13 on: February 04, 2011, 04:47:41 pm »

Browsers are indeed funny things. I had built and tested a site with all the five major browsers before Xmas and now I find that in IE there is a tiling issue which certainly was not there before (and my other half agrees). Traced the problem to copying and pasting text from the latest version of MS Word so now having to do it all again the hard way, but why didn't it show previously?

Oh well, back to the grind.
« Last Edit: February 04, 2011, 04:50:46 pm by Justinr »
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Michael West

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Re: Suggestions for the web site review requesters and critics
« Reply #14 on: February 04, 2011, 09:35:11 pm »

Space.....character space  such as the spaces between these words when occurring between some tags will create and unwanted space in most browsers. Id not checked I.E. when I discovered this hideous glitch Designed and Built By Adobe Dreamweaver.

</a><a>..will not create the afore bemoaned space....</a> <a> will.

this might seem rather trivial but finding nothing in the code....which one could coneivably expect to create the un wanted space had me pulling out hair

images signifigantly resized Inside.. Adobe Dreamweaver [numerical re-sizing] dont play well with some browsers
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Justinr

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Re: Suggestions for the web site review requesters and critics
« Reply #15 on: February 05, 2011, 03:35:26 am »

Space.....character space  such as the spaces between these words when occurring between some tags will create and unwanted space in most browsers. Id not checked I.E. when I discovered this hideous glitch Designed and Built By Adobe Dreamweaver.

</a><a>..will not create the afore bemoaned space....</a> <a> will.

this might seem rather trivial but finding nothing in the code....which one could coneivably expect to create the un wanted space had me pulling out hair

images signifigantly resized Inside.. Adobe Dreamweaver [numerical re-sizing] dont play well with some browsers

Boy oh boy can I relate to that, especially the hair pulling bit. There was nothing untoward in the code with the problem I mentioned, it was only when I went back to rebuilding the page and checking at each stage that I found the copied text was trying to impose it's own formatting which basically skewed the structure of the whole table. Chrome, Firefox, Opera and Safari ignored it but IE picked it up, the browser is from the same stable as Word though so maybe that has a bearing upon it.

Interesting what you say about resizing images, I've always reduced file size in the PS 'Save for web' function and so far have never had a problem with them rendering as required. I tend to prepare all the elements of the site first and then use the editor, Expression Web in this case, to assemble them into the page. To repeat an unpopular view I still believe that it's horses for courses when matching tasks to the appropriate software.





« Last Edit: February 05, 2011, 07:20:07 am by Justinr »
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