How to detect table width or height?

[Dennis]

Re: How to detect table width or height?

On Mon, 27 Oct 2003 13:53:01 +1100, Mark Parnell
<webmaster@clar kecomputers.com .au> wrote:

[color=blue][color=green]
>> Not if a new HDTV was free of charge.
>>[/color]
>
>But I have no way of getting it home. Or it won't fit in my loungeroom.[/color]

The Macromedia technicians will deliver it to your doorstep and set it
all up for you. If you loungeroom isn't big enough, their
construction crew will expand your room to make it fit. Not bad for
free.

Dennis

[Dennis]

Re: How to detect table width or height?

On Mon, 27 Oct 2003 07:10:30 +0100, Christoph Paeper <crissov@gmx.ne t>
wrote:
[color=blue]
>Yeah, right. Why should they? Most of current Flash content on the Web is
>pink noise and there're no signs for it getting better, thus it would be
>extremely stupid for a SE provider to put a lot of energy and money into
>attempts to parse it properly.[/color]

I hope Google never gets into deciding whether to index something
based on someone's editorial opinion of its worth. If it's there,
parse it.

[Dennis]

Re: How to detect table width or height?

On Mon, 27 Oct 2003 12:40:38 +1100, Mark Parnell
<webmaster@clar kecomputers.com .au> wrote:
[color=blue]
>
>If I knew what honery meant, I might be offended. :-)[/color]

I'm honery and I'm going to keep on spelling it "honery" no matter
what anybody says. I got my principles.[color=blue]
>
>Why pay money for a program that stops _some_ flash ads, when I can
>uninstall Flash for free and miss them all? I have seen very few
>legitimate uses for Flash, and many mis-uses, so see no reason to have it
>installed. If that means I miss out on your site, fine.[/color]

If you are someone who enjoys cinema, you MUST be drawn in by good
flash sites. Graphics + motion + sound + imagination = fun. What's
wrong with a little fun?

[Brian]

Re: How to detect table width or height?

Dennis wrote:[color=blue]
>
> If you are someone who enjoys cinema,[/color]

I do. And when I'm in the mood, I go to the cinema.
[color=blue]
> you MUST be drawn in by good flash sites.[/color]

You MUST be joking. How is some 4cm x 6cm Flash animation thingy on my
computer screen anything close to a film on a cinema screen? How
could my tiny computer speakers compare with those in the movie house?

When I want to see a movie, I don't go online, except perhaps to find
out what's playing locally. And in that case, I don't want some
rediculous Flash "movie" for links, or to display animated graphics of
the cinema's logo. I just want to know what's playing, thank you.

--
Brian
follow the directions in my address to email me

[I V]

Re: How to detect table width or height?

On Fri, 31 Oct 2003 20:57:10 -0800, Dennis wrote:
[color=blue]
> On Mon, 27 Oct 2003 13:53:01 +1100, Mark Parnell
> <webmaster@clar kecomputers.com .au> wrote:
>
>[color=green][color=darkred]
>>> Not if a new HDTV was free of charge.
>>>[/color]
>>
>>But I have no way of getting it home. Or it won't fit in my loungeroom.[/color]
>
> The Macromedia technicians will deliver it to your doorstep and set it
> all up for you. If you loungeroom isn't big enough, their
> construction crew will expand your room to make it fit. Not bad for
> free.[/color]

So Macromedia will write me a Flash plugin for non-x86 Unix? For Lynx? For
free? Yeah, that wouldn't be bad, but it's obviously untrue.

--
"- Penny, I worry that you are loosing heart... You are not the sweet little
girl I once knew. Where's your sense of wonder?
- Currently flowing into a sanitary napkin... Guess where my childlike
innocence and idle dreams are currently wedged. Come on, I dare you."

http://www.huh.34sp.com/

[kchayka]

Re: How to detect table width or height?

Dennis wrote:[color=blue]
>
> I don't see any inherent reason why,
> historically, we couldn't have instructed our browsers to take our
> text and image content and chop it up into columns of specified
> widths, and flow it across the viewport horizontally.[/color]

Probably because it's harder to read on screen like this, at least for
LTR languages like English? Maybe because other apps don't normally
function this way? If my word processor made me read all docs like
that, I'd replace it in a heartbeat. It's hard enough reading the
occassional landscape-oriented doc. I would never choose to read
everything this way.

There are too many variations in browsing environments to make this work
anyway. The best you could get would be something that might be usable
in a certain minimum viewport size combined with a certain maximum text
size. You can't count on either of these, so the result would be either
sub-optimal or unusable for everyone outside these limits.

--
To email a reply, remove (dash)un(dash). Mail sent to the un
address is considered spam and automatically deleted.

[Christoph Paeper]

Re: How to detect table width or height?

*Dennis* <theonlyDennis@ removeForSpam_m indspring.com>:[color=blue]
>
> Why people don't use Flash this way is a mystery to me.[/color]

But you do understand why a considerable amount of people take this among
others as a reason for disabling the Flash plug-in and it's thus unwise to
rely on Flash for a web-site?

--
Useless Fact #10:
Percentage of Americans who have visited Disneyland/Disney World: 70%.

[Christoph Paeper]

Re: How to detect table width or height?

*Dennis* <theonlyDennis@ removeForSpam_m indspring.com>:[color=blue]
> On Mon, 27 Oct 2003 13:53:01 +1100, Mark Parnell[/color]

[If the Flash plug-in was an HDTV set.][color=blue][color=green]
>> But I have no way of getting it home. Or it won't fit in my loungeroom.[/color]
>
> The Macromedia technicians will deliver it to your doorstep and set it
> all up for you. If you loungeroom isn't big enough, their construction
> crew will expand your room to make it fit.[/color]

They'll get me a new processor and mainboard so that the nasty Flash plug-in
won't ever again acquire a stupid 90-100% CPU time, no matter what it's
displaying? Cool.

--
Useless Fact #3:
Every day more money is printed for Monopoly than the US Treasury.

[Christoph Paeper]

Re: How to detect table width or height?

*Dennis* <theonlyDennis@ removeForSpam_m indspring.com>:[color=blue]
> On Mon, 27 Oct 2003 07:10:30 +0100, Christoph Paeper <crissov@gmx.ne t>
>[color=green]
>> Most of current Flash content on the Web is pink noise and there're no signs
>> for it getting better, thus it would be extremely stupid for a SE provider
>> to put a lot of energy and money into attempts to parse it properly.[/color]
>
> I hope Google never gets into deciding whether to index something
> based on someone's editorial opinion of its worth.[/color]

With the very same argumentation, you could want Google to download every
MP3 out there, extract the ID3 tag, which is only makes a small percentage
of the file size, and make that information searchable.
[color=blue]
> If it's there, parse it.[/color]

That's nothing you get for free. Even if it's easily possible, there must be
some value of doing it--parsing millions of Flash ads and information-free
intro movies hasn't. Equally proprietary Office documents and PDFs OTOH do
provide valueable information in general, so it makes sense to parse them.

Furthermore the semantics that e.g. HTML provides makes SE parsing a lot
easier.

--
If you can't convince them, confuse them. (Harry S. Truman)

[kchayka]

Re: How to detect table width or height?

Dennis wrote:[color=blue]
> On Tue, 28 Oct 2003 12:01:38 -0600, kchayka <kcha-un-yka@sihope.com>
> wrote:
>[color=green]
>>You assume the author is using Flash appropriately. This is usually
>>not the case. So far, the OP hasn't said anything that leads me to
>>believe he will be using it for a suitable reason, either. More like he
>>wants total control over layout, which Flash will definitely give him.
>>[/color]
> "Total control over layout" is not a suitable reason?[/color]

When the only reason for this level of control is the designer's layout
whim, I think not. Show where there is a relationship between elements
that must be strictly maintained to be meaningful, and I would probably
say yes.

--
To email a reply, remove (dash)un(dash). Mail sent to the un
address is considered spam and automatically deleted.

[Mikko Rantalainen]

Re: How to detect table width or height?

Christoph Paeper / 2003-11-02 02:44:[color=blue]
> *Dennis* <theonlyDennis@ removeForSpam_m indspring.com>:[color=green]
>>On Mon, 27 Oct 2003 07:10:30 +0100, Christoph Paeper <crissov@gmx.ne t>
>>[color=darkred]
>>>Most of current Flash content on the Web is pink noise and there're no signs
>>>for it getting better, thus it would be extremely stupid for a SE provider
>>>to put a lot of energy and money into attempts to parse it properly.[/color][/color]
>[color=green]
>>If it's there, parse it.[/color]
>
> That's nothing you get for free. Even if it's easily possible, there must be
> some value of doing it--parsing millions of Flash ads and information-free
> intro movies hasn't. Equally proprietary Office documents and PDFs OTOH do
> provide valueable information in general, so it makes sense to parse them.[/color]

Plus, there should be *no need* to parse flash animations. If the
content author followed recommendations , he would provide
*alternative* content as plain HTML and SE already indexes that
content. What else could the content author want? If he isn't
following the recommendations who we should blaim then? SE spider
for not parsing their animation? What next - a parser that
identifies text strings from background images?

--
Mikko

[Andrew Thompson]

Re: How to detect table width or height?

"Mikko Rantalainen" <mira@st.jyu.fi > wrote in message
news:bo3m5k$p79 $1@mordred.cc.j yu.fi...[color=blue]
> Christoph Paeper / 2003-11-02 02:44:[color=green]
> > *Dennis* <theonlyDennis@ removeForSpam_m indspring.com>:[color=darkred]
> >>On Mon, 27 Oct 2003 07:10:30 +0100, Christoph Paeper <crissov@gmx.ne t>[/color][/color][/color]
.....[color=blue]
>...If the
> content author followed recommendations , he would provide
> *alternative* content as plain HTML and SE already indexes that
> content. What else could the content author want? If he isn't
> following the recommendations who we should blaim then? SE spider
> for not parsing their animation? What next - a parser that
> identifies text strings from background images?[/color]

I can imagine the form spammers would get excited
at the prospect of circumventing the 'type the secret
number in the image' form verifiers.. :(

--
Andrew Thompson

http://www.AThompson.info/

http://www.PhySci.org/

http://www.1point1C.org/

[Mark Parnell]

Re: How to detect table width or height?

Sometime around Fri, 31 Oct 2003 19:48:07 -0800, Dennis is reported to have
stated:
[color=blue]
> Could you post some urls of sites that take advantage of a wide
> viewport? I'd like to see how they do it. My suspicion is that it[/color]

The size of the viewport is irrelevant. In theory, a well designed site
will flow (hence "fluid" design) to fit the available canvas, whatever size
that may be. You need only look as far as the sigs of many of the regulars
here for examples, but here are a few:

http://www.dorward.me.uk/

http://williamtasso.com/

http://steve.pugh.net/

And of course the one in my sig. ;-)
[color=blue]
> can't be done well with present day CSS and that THAT's why the big[/color]

What's to be done? If you don't specify a width at all, the page will
adjust to the screen width. How much better could you get?
[color=blue]
> sites (eg the big buck designers) settle for 800-wide.[/color]

No, they settle for 800px wide because that's what was done in 1995. And
unfortunately, that's what is still being taught in many web design
courses. The web itself has moved on, and it is only a matter of time
before these big sites either catch up or get left behind.

--
Mark Parnell

http://www.clarkecomputers.com.au

[Nikolaos Giannopoulos]

Re: How to detect table width or height?

Dennis wrote:[color=blue]
> On Mon, 27 Oct 2003 12:40:38 +1100, Mark Parnell
> <webmaster@clar kecomputers.com .au> wrote:
>[color=green]
>>Why pay money for a program that stops _some_ flash ads, when I can
>>uninstall Flash for free and miss them all? I have seen very few
>>legitimate uses for Flash, and many mis-uses, so see no reason to have it
>>installed. If that means I miss out on your site, fine.[/color]
>
> If you are someone who enjoys cinema, you MUST be drawn in by good
> flash sites. Graphics + motion + sound + imagination = fun. What's
> wrong with a little fun?[/color]

You have to be kidding right? You call these "good" sites?

It's interesting that you leave out:

usability + interactivity

in your equation. This omission demonstrates the large problem with
flash sites and that's that their author's develop them primarily for
entertainment purposes and forget everything else.

Interestingy enough I think you almost had me believing that your
intentions were different but alas it doesn't seem so.

I don't know about you but seeing a movie is a pretty passive experience
- I'm not sure why I would want a passive experience when I'm surfing
the www (unless of course I'm watching an online movie trailer or
something). Why not simply turn on the TV instead of your computer?


Finally, you need to also take into consideration that Flash is
delivered as a plug-in and morever plug-ins have bad user experience
stigma associated to them; even if the installers have gotten better and
the systems don't require reboots anymore - people will always have
security concerns, be reluctant based on not wanting additional software
on their system or due to internet viruses, and / or may have this
desire to "retain" control of their computer (and I mean this from the
less knowledgable user base).

The way I see it there are one of two typical paths down the flash
development road:

(1) a) Build a flash site without useful content
b) Don't care if only a select group can access it
c) Don't care if many search engines can't index it

OR

(2) a) Build a flash site with useful content
b) Realize that you may want it to be more acessible
c) Realize that you may want more search engines to
index it
d) Develop a parallel non-flash site
e) Realize that the non-flash site useful content is
indexed by more search engines
f) Realize that the maintenance effort to keep the two
in sync is not worth it
g) Drop the flash site

--Nikolaos

[Simon]

Re: How to detect table width or height?

Andrew Thompson wrote:
<<Snipped>>[color=blue]
>[/color]

Client: "Hello, I'd like a web site designed please"

Me: "Sure, what did you have in mind?"

Client: "Well, I'd like a lot of animation to make it stand out"

Me: "Ahh ok, I gather you don't want a good ranking in search engines?"

Client: "Huh?? of course I do!"

Me: "If your content is in flash the search engines won't read it"

Client: "umm ok, html first page and flash the rest"

Me: "Ok, so you want a page rank of zero and to appear maybe number 900
out of 1000 sites"

Client "Huh?"

Me: "When the search engine does a deep crawl of your site it will only
see the text on the welcome page so anyone who has more than 1 page will
stand a far greater chance of getting waaaay higher than you"

Client: "Pah, who cares do it!"

Me: "Ok, oh... according to the Royal National Institution of the Blind
1 in 7 people on the net are disabled in some way. Taking that into
account you could be losing a lot of clients"

Client: "Pah, small percentage"

Me: "10% of 1 million visitors is still 100,000 people who can't access
the site".

Client: "Pah, who cares about them either"

Me: "You will, it is illegal in the USA, Australia and the UK to have a
site not accessible to the disabled. AOL and the Australian Olympics web
site have already been sued and lost"

Client: "But I love the animation's on sites"

Me: "Latest research shows that most surfers now sub consciously blank
anything animated as the brain will be almost certain it's advertising"

Client: "But I read that Flash has a user base of 97%"

Me: "Only those with newer browsers, java enabled and even then if 1 in
7 are disabled chances are they have it installed at home but can't view
it. That's not even taking into account those who have installed but
instantly hit the back button because they are sick to death of 5 minute
load times and poor flash design."

Client: "Ok, what do you suggest"

Me: "Well if you don't care about the Law, the disabled, the instant
hate of anything flash, the brain ignoring anything animating at
subconscious level, the people who don't have flash, the people who have
it turned off, the people who use old computers who don't have flash,
the people who have machines too slow to run flash then I reckon you're
onto a winner".

Client: "Woot, then lets do it!"

Me: "Sigh..... /click"

Client: "Hello?.....hel lo??....HELLO?? "

How was that?

--

Simon Day
Free desktop wallpapers of Torbay at: http://www.simonday.com