ALA 3 Goes Online 42
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 ;-)."
Web Design Goodness (Score:2)
Shame about the browsers :-( (Score:2)
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)
What's soo bad about games.slashdot.com? (Score:2)
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.* ?
Re:What's soo bad about games.slashdot.com? (Score:2)
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?
Re:What's soo bad about games.slashdot.com? (Score:1)
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
Re:What's soo bad about games.slashdot.com? (Score:1)
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.
Re: (Score:2)
Editor! Editor! (Score:2)
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
Re:Editor! Editor! (Score:2)
You forgot the apostrophe.
Grammar flame not, lest ye be grammar flamed.
Re:Editor! Editor! (Score:2)
Ack!
Well, I did say "semi-competent".
Squint squint (Score:2, Insightful)
4pt font is good design?
Physician, heal thyself!
Are you fsking kidding me? (Score:3, Insightful)
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...)
Re:Are you fsking kidding me? (Score:2)
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.
Re:Are you fsking kidding me? (Score:3, Insightful)
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
Re:Are you fsking kidding me? (Score:2)
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.
Re:Are you fsking kidding me? (Score:3, Interesting)
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]
Re:Are you fsking kidding me? (Score:2)
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!!!
Re:Are you fsking kidding me? (Score:1)
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.
Re:Are you fsking kidding me? (Score:2, Funny)
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
Re:Are you fsking kidding me? (Score:3, Interesting)
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.
Re:Are you fsking kidding me? (Score:2)
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 possibility... (Score:2)
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
Re:Here's a possibility... (Score:2)
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.
Re:Here's a possibility... (Score:2)
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.
Re:Are you fsking kidding me? (Score:2)
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)
Setting a cookie for no adequately explored reason - check.
Poor contrast on fonts - check.
Yup. Good design.
Re:Are you fsking kidding me? (Score:2)
Re:Are you fsking kidding me? (Score:1)
Re:Are you fsking kidding me? (Score:2)
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)
Re:Permanent URL (Score:1)
still broken (Score:2)
"educative" indeed (Score:2)
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
Re:Zeldman (Score:2, Interesting)
My .02 (Score:1)
My 1 Cent (Score:2, Interesting)
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
Re:ALA Logo (Score:2)
Re:ALA Logo (Score:2)