Re: [OT] Web formats/etc.

From: "Thomas Barclay" <kaladorn@magma.ca>

> Bri's pages are easy to read. Most of the 
> problems in converting stuff to stargrunt.ca's 
> formats are this: We have a stated goal to keep 
> the pages short. This means for some of the 
> chapters in Los' work, I have to paginate it into 
> a bunch of HTML pages. For cleanliness, we 
> hand code our HTML. And we use CSS/SSI or 
> something of that sort (tagging text using span 
> tags and a class identifier) to markup for 
> formatting. And of course if we have to embed 
> images, since we focus on load speeds, we 
> have to tune their size and color depths etc.

> My main goals in web design are this: 
> - Usability on all browsers (Adrian just fixed an 
> SSI thing and now Opera renders the site well, 
> as does IE, NS (maybe not the oldest one...), 
> and Mozilla - even Lynx works after a fashion)
> - Download speed (I'm on 31kbps max - 26-28 
> kpbs more commonly so I sympathize)
> - Readability (note, our black text is NOT 
> displayed on an actinic white - it is displayed on 
> an off white colour)
> - Common look and feel across all sub-pages

See http://www.softimp.com.au/about.html for what
we did, and why.

We regretfully decided not to use CSS, because of
the browser incompatibility problems :-(

Our clients use, amongst others,
Opera 6.01, 6.03, 6.05 on NT, Win 98 (different behaviousr on each)
IE 5.0, 5.5, 6.0 with various service packs on various Windows
OS's and Macs
Netscape 4.6, 4.7, 6 on various OS's
Konquerer on Red Hat, Debian, SUSE
Mozilla of various types on various OS's
Lynx + Speech synthesis

It's a line-ball decision. CSS's are so darn useful that
we're still reviewing the situation. Mainly because some
of the new browsers work well with CSS, but not so well
with deprecated HTML. We tell 'em it's HTML 4.01 transitional,
but do they listen?

One gotcha: The Websafe colour palette. Read the "about"
pages above for some more data.