CSS: a new technology - BBC

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  • John Hosking

    CSS: a new technology - BBC

    The BBC has (or have) discovered web accessibility, as a topic for an
    article if not a philosophy for their sites.

    Here's a fairly dreadful story from yesterday...

    Website designer, Leonie Watson says: "There's a technology called
    Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) that allows you to control the way a page
    is displayed, such as the colour of the text and background.

    "So if that's the way a page has been built, then you can control that
    from within the browser or OS.

    "However, that's quite a new technology, it's only been around a couple
    of years, and a lot of designers are still very wary of using it. They
    actually hard code the colours into the web page itself, which means
    that they can't be overridden by your browser, or OS."
    Maybe when CSS is more than a couple of years old, it'll take off.

    And I didn't know this:
    Harry Potter author JK Rowling recently launched the first site to use a
    new form of Flash, which is often used to add interactivity and
    animation to a website.
    This follows up on a post by Karl Groves over at a.w.webmaster:
    <Xns9869978EE78 64karlkarlcorec om@216.196.97.1 36>. It's unclear how
    accessible Rowling's site is since it's all Flash (7, 8 who cares?). But
    I didn't know Rowling was the *first*. I guess The Queen showed up and
    launched it with a bottle of champagne, or summat.

    They also call Target "America's giant DIY chain" and make numerous
    grammatical mistakes, but such quibbles are even more OT here.

    BBC, News, BBC News, news online, world, uk, international, foreign, british, online, service


    --
    John
  • Sam Read

    #2
    Re: CSS: a new technology - BBC

    On Sat, 28 Oct 2006 09:29:01 +0100, John Hosking
    <John@Hosking.n ame.DROPTHE.inv alidwrote:
    The BBC has (or have) discovered web accessibility, as a topic for an
    article if not a philosophy for their sites.
    "However, CSS is quite a new technology, it's only been around a couple
    of years, and a lot of designers are still very wary of using it. They
    actually hard code the colours into the web page itself, which means
    that they can't be overridden by your browser, or OS."
    I've been contacted by the BBC before, looking for quotes and opinions on
    things (computer related but not the web). I declined though other people
    took up the offer and gave equally inacurate 'acvice' to the reporter, who
    just published whatever they wrote without checking it because at the end
    of the day the reporter hasn't a clue whether it's right or not, and as
    long as it looks well written their editor will be happy too.

    Basically, when they have a storey covering a specilist subject and don't
    want to go to the effort of tracking down acknowledged experts in business
    or university they simply trawl relevant messageboards and newsgroups and
    randomly email people asking if they'd like to answer a few questions. And
    we all know how well informed most people who hang around messageboards
    and newsgroups are, even many of the long-termers ;-)

    When it comes to something like web design advice, there's a danger people
    working in the media will already know people who make websites for the
    media (radio stations, TV personalities, record labels, etc) and will just
    call up these drinking buddies for quotes. And we all know that
    media/showbiz websites are at the bottom of the barrel when it comes to
    quality web design. Most of them are a bloated mess of badly broken tag
    soup with lots of Javascript and Flash to do things that could easily be
    done more effectively with CSS or a little DHTML. So from their point of
    view, tables is how web pages are made and they haven't a clue about CSS,
    so if they personally only heard about CSS 2 years ago and also heard that
    it doesn't work because IE6 apparently interprets EMs and PX or something,
    then they'll arrogantly pass off their personal knowledge as established
    fact because ultimately they earn a fortune for crap sites which they
    think are amazing, and the marketing people at the media companies who pay
    them think they're better than Jesus.

    I also contacted the BBC web people once over a CSS problem they had and
    even included fixed code but they sent back a nonsense reply which showed
    they didn't understand the problem and weren't interested in fixing
    problems. Their attitude was one of "We're the BBC, her majesty's actual
    BBC, so we are the masters of all knowledge and cannot make mistakes or
    misunderstand any form of broadcasting, including the Web..."

    I'd never bother to contact a large company again after that.

    Comment

    • zzpat

      #3
      Re: CSS: a new technology - BBC

      John Hosking wrote:
      The BBC has (or have) discovered web accessibility, as a topic for an
      article if not a philosophy for their sites.
      >
      Here's a fairly dreadful story from yesterday...
      >
      >
      BBC, News, BBC News, news online, world, uk, international, foreign, british, online, service

      >
      Did you check their CSS?



      Comment

      • Dag Sunde

        #4
        Re: CSS: a new technology - BBC

        zzpat wrote:
        John Hosking wrote:
        >The BBC has (or have) discovered web accessibility, as a topic for an
        >article if not a philosophy for their sites.
        >>
        >Here's a fairly dreadful story from yesterday...
        >>
        >>
        >http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programme...ne/6090418.stm
        >>
        >
        Did you check their CSS?
        >

        http://jigsaw.w3.org/css-validator/v...usermedium=all
        Just clicked on your bottom link, and got "Congratulation s! This document
        validates as CSS!"

        Don't see the problem...

        They use pixels for font-sizing, but apart from that...?

        --
        Dag.


        Comment

        • Felix Miata

          #5
          Re: CSS: a new technology - BBC

          On 06/10/28 10:29 (GMT+0200) John Hosking apparently typed:
          The BBC has (or have) discovered web accessibility, as a topic for an
          article if not a philosophy for their sites.
          Certainly not as a philosophy for their own site:

          --
          "Rejoice and be glad, because great is your reward in heaven."
          Matthew 5:12 NIV

          Team OS/2 ** Reg. Linux User #211409

          Felix Miata *** http://mrmazda.no-ip.com/

          Comment

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