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GUI Programming Software IT Technology

ALA 3 Goes Online 42

Posted by timothy from the eyestrain-relief dept.
Qbertino writes "Jeffrey Zeldmans Alistapart ("ALA"), a very educative website for everything concerning webdesign, that also heavily promotes web standards, has come back online in it's third incarnation. As you might expect from one of the world leading web designers it works good in all standards compliant browsers and - other than recent attempts at webdesign - doesn't make your eyes bleed ;-)."
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ALA 3 Goes Online More

ALA 3 Goes Online

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  • Yay! The article on tabs is particularly delicious.

    • As usual, A List Apart offers interesting insights on what can theoretically be done with CSS. What a shame about the browsers.

      I've recently been involved in a complete redesign of a fairly large club web site (several dozen pages, several thousand page hits per month). One of our goals was to move from an old, table-based and clunky design to a streamlined system based on XML --XSLT--> HTML and CSS.

      We spent a considerable amount of time investigating how the pages rendered on CSS-capable browsers, a

  • Eyes ARE bleeding (Score:2, Interesting)

    by angle_mark ( 472962 )
    After reading that the site wouldn't make my eyes bleed I happily went and took a look but ugh! All that red text and faint type. My eyes are bleeding! The content on the site IS good though. An interesting read.
  • I have all the optimisation settings on: As many FP (front page, not first post you nimwit) articles and +1 on every thread. Along with that, I have "AvantGo" style turned on so this place reads like a little retarded child of Usenet.

    All I've got on every slashdot page is basic text, the Slashdot image link and NO banner image. I disabled it a while back.

    So what's wrong with games.* ?
    • So what's wrong with games.* ?

      Other than blinding white text on purple gradient background, nothing.

      Also, I couldn't agree more on using the Lite setting for Slashdot. I only wish you could apply a custom stylesheet to that.

      Hello? Editors? Slashcoders? CSS support? Please?

      • Is that all people are bitching about? Jeez. I thought that maybe my Privoxy proxy was eating out the retardedness or something, but they're complaining about the way the gradient backgrounds of the HEADLINES ONLY are a little hard to read?

        I happen to think the color scheme on games.slashdot.org is pretty slick. In fact, I don't even have any trouble reading the headlines personally.

        I've seen a hell of a lot more irritating, unreadable, stupid site designs than that. Starting with anything that uses Javas


        • That's because the cone cells in your eyes severly mutilated five seconds after your first visit there. That's why the Games scheme looks "pretty slick", but everything else is in washed out sepia tones. I recommend a month of complete sensory deprivation treatment.
      • Comment removed based on user account deletion

  • And now the same story, with semi-competent editing:

    "Jeffrey Zeldmans A List Apart ("ALA"), a very educational website for everything concerning webdesign [no comma] that also heavily promotes web standards, has come back online in its third incarnation. As you might expect from one of the world leading web designers, it works well in all standards compliant browsers and - unlike other recent attempts at webdesign - doesn't make your eyes bleed ;-)."

    I apologize for the grammar flame, but my brain was b

  • Squint squint (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Dancin_Santa ( 265275 )
    Gray text on gray background is good design?

    4pt font is good design?

    Physician, heal thyself!

  • Are you fsking kidding me? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by V. Mole ( 9567 ) on Wednesday October 22, 2003 @09:20AM (#7280161) Homepage

    Let's see: low contrast type. Doesn't expand or shrink to fit into browser window. *plonk*.

    This is supposed to be the paragon of web design? ALA has good articles and ideas. I wish they'd followed some of them in their redesign. (Their second incarnation was pretty good. I wonder what happened...)

    • I was just getting ready to comment on this. While the use of CSS, XHTML, etc. is a good thing, the use of these technologies to create a 599 pixel width column, centered in the page, is not. Gee, if I force my users to only use a certain amount of screen real estate, I could do these things too.

      ALA, let me know when you have a page design that respects the user's preferences for browser window size. Otherwise, credit C-Net for your layout. After all, I remember that layout from 4 years ago.

      • Regarding fixed width designs: There are good reasons to use fixed width designs. The primary good reason to fix the width is that readers tend to suffer more-than-usual fatigue reading lines beyond the 65-80 character range. But there are much more elegant ways to go about doing this than what ALA is doing, and what's more, Zeldman has even linked to sites that explain the techniques.

        Regarding the ALA redesign and Zeldman's design in general: It kinda sucks, for reasons everybody has mentioned. The

        • The primary good reason to fix the width is that readers tend to suffer more-than-usual fatigue reading lines beyond the 65-80 character range.

          No, that's not a good reason. If I find the text too wide for comfort (and I often do), I *gasp* narrow the window. Gee, that solves the problem *and* avoids the need for any silly-ass tricks that may or may not validate *and* lets me access the sidebars *and* works on narrower than average screens/windows/whatevers.

          • No, that's not a good reason. If I find the text too wide for comfort (and I often do), I *gasp* narrow the window.

            On the other hand, not all users are going to be apt to do this and it's a courtesy to have the default behavior be the most readable on the most screens. Anyway, the techniques I described use max-width and an IE specific technique to accomplish the same in the CSS, which means that, unlike ALA, you can always narrow the window as much as you'd like. You can see it in action: http://www.v [viewfromthehaiti.org]
            • On the other hand, not all users are going to be apt to do this...

              Just like not all McDonalds customers are apt to know that hot coffee should not be applied to one's body, and therefore all coffee should be served at the least objectionable temperature for coffee bathers, 102 degrees Fahrenheit.

              Resizing the browser window: it's not just for rocket scientists anymore!!!

            • On the other hand, not all users are going to be apt to do this

              Not apt to resize their browser window?! Then they shut off the damn computer and go read something else.

              Where you make-an-excuse-for-everything-and-everybody people come from is beyond me.
            • On the other hand, not all users are going to be apt to do this and it's a courtesy to have the default behavior be the most readable on the most screens.

              Dear 12" monitor owner,

              I am sorry to hear that my use of a 933 pixel wide is causing you some distress. Unfortunately there is nothing we can do to correct your problem. You see, our master web designers at www.aripapart.com have told us that the minor inconveniences of 21" monitor owners far outweigh the fundamental usability needs of 12" monitor

            • Nice site (seriously!) (at least once I noticed that the link and the text didn't match :-)) But, you note, I can't make it as *wide* as I want. Better than an absolute fixed width, but still annoying.

              Try to be a little more civil.

              Huh? You stated an opinion, I disagreed. If disagreeing with you is uncivil, then you're not going to like this post either, I suppose. If you're objecting to the term "silly-ass", well, then, you shouldn't be hanging out on slashdot: it gets a lot stronger than that.

            • > Anyway, the techniques I described use max-width and an IE specific technique to accomplish the same in the CSS, which means that, unlike ALA, you can always narrow the window as much as you'd like

              Yes, but can you *increase* the width?

              Many web sites appear as a tiny little box in the corner of my screen these days. 600 pixels wide is *small*. Thanks to decent web browsers I can increase the size of the fonts to a readable size, but often end up with paragraphs two or three words wide, which are real
            • Here's a case where JavaScript might actually serve some use.

              The The 80+-column eyestrain thing is a valid point. So is the point of making the page as wide as you want. What if a column were to default to 599px wide (using ALA as the example here) but then feature a "Wider" button which, when pressed, made the width of the column depend on the width of the window?

              A button like this could be done in less than ten lines of JavaScript, and that includes functionality to make it toggle the fixed width on and

              • FWIW, I've seen several sites that provide a similar feature for their fonts. The sizes are hard-coded to preserve the layout, but there's a set of buttons for "normal size", "large text" and "small text", which instantly switch the display as indicated. For sites that are quite clever with their layout, this seems a good compromise if you need to hard-code the text size but still want to cater for a variety of readers.

                • Exactly; font-size switchers are Good Things. Granted, it's just coding around an IE misfeature, but this is the kind of thing that JavaScript is really good for.

                  If only more sites that used JavaScript did stuff like that. Forget the cheesy animations; JavaScript really comes into its own when you're using it to make the site Just Plain Work Better.

        • The primary good reason to fix the width is that readers tend to suffer more-than-usual fatigue reading lines beyond the 65-80 character range.

          Unfortunately, that isn't strictly true. It's hard to read text beyond a few inches in width, the exact distance obviously varying with reading distance. That doesn't correspond to a given number of characters or words, however; font size (in pixels), viewable screen size, resolution and such all play a part as well.

          The difference is vitally important in fluid

    • Re:Are you fsking kidding me? (Score:4, Insightful)

      by wowbagger ( 69688 ) on Wednesday October 22, 2003 @09:39AM (#7280287) Homepage Journal
      Fixed width content - check.
      Setting a cookie for no adequately explored reason - check.
      Poor contrast on fonts - check.

      Yup. Good design.
    • Well, at least they avoided one of the more frequent sins with this kind of design: the font size is easily resizable. (Ctrl+scroll wheel in IE or View|Text Size|)
      • one of the more frequent sins with this kind of design: the font size is easily resizable
        Lack of resizability is an anti-feature in IE, not a problem with websites.
        • Lack of resizability is an anti-feature in IE, not a problem with websites.

          I dunno if I agree about that:

          I could think of some weak reasons why it might be useful to at least have the option of specifying a fixed font size. A well-designed site will be resizable, a poorly-designed site won't be.

  • Permanent URL (Score:4, Interesting)

    by metalhed77 ( 250273 ) <andrewvc@gmaCOUGARil.com minus cat> on Wednesday October 22, 2003 @09:47AM (#7280346) Homepage
    On each article page, there is a link labeled Permanent URL which you click to permanently bookmark the page. Now, i can't figure out how to get to a page in such a way where the permanent bookmark url is different than the page I'm viewing, but I'm sure that this is not good UI design. Why are all these URLs having to be reused? there is no good reason, especially with things like modrewrite. I've always found ALA to be useful, but often out of step with the true philosophy of the W3C. That being said, I think W3C HTML standards suck and are philosophically broken in the first place, so maybe he has a point.
    • Typically in CMS systems the software will create a 'hardcopy' of the dynamic content and store it in a seperate 'archive' dir or something... that way you can always get to the information even if the db server is dead, or the id numbers of the articles have been reset etc.
      • That kind of thing is silly. Something like that should be user transparent. These kinds of things seeping into userspace are a Bad Thing(tm). Users don't need to know about your CMS. This kind of thing should be solved with proper architecture. In the worst case mod rewrite could serve as a bandage.
  • "Jeffrey Zeldmans Alistapart ("ALA"), a very educative website for everything concerning webdesign, that also heavily promotes web standards, has come back online in it's third incarnation.

    Ah, if only we an "educative" web site for everything concerning grammar!

    ("Jeffrey Zeldman's Alistapart ("ALA"), a very educational (yes, "educative" is a word, and highly awkward one in this context, too) web site (but "website" is also apparently accepted) for everything concerning web design ("webdesign", however, i
  • Despite the comments about the faint color and fixed width, I think the site is a very good resource for any web developer. It has alot of great content on it, I found it useful when making http://www.mindwarp.net

  • My 1 Cent (Score:2, Interesting)

    by TomGroves ( 622890 )
    Faint Text: Looks fine to me on three different monitors. Perhaps you should adjust your contrast?

    Fixed Width: It is a trade off. Yes, text could flow on forever until it fills the user's window width (which is very bad), or the text can be set to a reasonable fixed width, preventing users from resizing the text as desired (bad but less bad) but saving a lot of work for users that don't mind the choosen fixed width.

    Final thought: (and this is not a plug in anyway because I am sure most of /. would

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