CSS VS Tables Sunday, May 28, 2006
Posted by VoeD in Articles, Bookmarks, Design, Thoughts.add a comment
In my research, I collated (with the help of Veerle's blog) some articles on CSS-based design VS HTML table tag-based design.
- Periodically Tabling on The Daily WTF – a good bad example of using CSS *sigh*
- CSS vs Tables on Veerle's blog – she takes a very pragmatic stand on the whole thing but concludes her likings for the much "cleaner way" of layout design
- Why tables for layout is stupid on Seybold Seminars? – I guess the take is quite obvious here
- Did CSS really kill the tables? on Markus Dresch's Multiverse – another sensible pragmatic approach to the issue
- Gasp! Tables! on mezzoblue – another article that basically says: it depends
- An Objective Look at Table Based vs. CSS Based Design on Andy Budd – probably the best written one among the listed here
JavaScript Speed Test Sunday, May 28, 2006
Posted by VoeD in Articles, Implementation.add a comment
This page/article from Jason Orendorff might be quite useful when it bogs down to fine tuning implementation. It lists down various JavaScript snippets and does a qualitative analysis on the various running times.
When Ajax Gets Abused Sunday, May 28, 2006
Posted by VoeD in Articles, Implementation.add a comment
You have just got to love The Daily WTF; If I can only read two feeds a day, it would be this and Slashdot. Anyway, Ajaxian quoted The Daily WTF for this piece of interesting (nonetheless scary) code. I think the comments on the Ajaxian post sums it all up..
The problem is that the developer implemented an “execPHP” function. [...] This is a gateway to run any code on the server. Might as well just have a text box on the page that says “type some code in, and we’ll execute it”.
Graceful Degradation of Ajax Sunday, May 28, 2006
Posted by VoeD in Articles, Design.add a comment
Ryan Campbell of Particletree wrote a great article on the Graceful Degradation of Ajax. While reading on Dan Cederholm's book, Bulletproof Web Design, on the degradation of web site with no support for CSS especially with the flourishing of mobile devices accessing content over the internet these days, this idea actually came up to me: Graceful Degradation for Ajax. Particletree laid down the hows and whys for this quite elegantly in the article.
Essentially, by utilising the noscript element as well as by following a graceful development cycle, such an ambition is indeed possible (for any Ajax Weblication?). This is not surprising actually, the same principles apply for CSS based designs. We start with a good structure and have all the presentation and visuals details laid down on top of the structure later on. But this paragraph hardly does justice to the article; more details can be found in the article.
Web Navigation is About Moving Forward Sunday, May 28, 2006
Posted by VoeD in Articles, Design, Thoughts.add a comment
GUUUI.com also posted an article from Gerry McGovern about Web Navigation.
The primary purpose of web navigation is to help people to move forward. It is not to tell them where they have been, or where they could have gone.
Its interesting though, research shows that the back button is the most frequently used feature of the web browser and that one of the many caveats in implementing Rich Internet Applications is in making sure that the Back button still works the way the user expects it to.
But I must agree, just as I have read from (again) Steve Krug's book (it's a really great book), that users tend to skim through the page and web pages are often not read/used by people the way developers intended them to.
Your job is to understand the primary direction your most important customers are heading, and to remove obstacles in the way of them arriving at that destination. Forward-looking navigation options should dominate.
