Adding borders...

[Alexander Mueller]

Re: Adding borders...

Steve Pugh wrote:[color=blue]
>
> And my honest opinion is that I don't care about you not caring.
> Gosh, what a cruel and hurtful world we live in![/color]

And I do not care whether you care for my caring.

If you want we can continue this for all eternity, but someone actually
must care, as we wouldnt pursue this conversation otherwise.

A requirment is something that binds someone to something. Usually by a
contract or by a law. The HTML specifications are general
recommendations and hence cant be a requirment by defintion.
[color=blue]
>
> I'm not a lawyer and I'm not an American so I'm not at all qualified
> to answer that question. I never raised the legal issue at all, other
> people did that. I really don't care about the legal specifics, I care
> about building accessible web sites that can be used by everyone.[/color]

Thats perfectly okay. You can give Jon your advice and suggest to
implements those tag (AND elements AND attributes ;)) but cant insult
him nor force him to do that. After all its HIS work, HIS time, HIS
money and of course HIS decision.

Alexander

[Chris Morris]

Re: Adding borders...

Alexander Mueller <postmaster@127 .0.0.1> writes:[color=blue]
> Chris Morris wrote:[color=green]
> > alt="" or alt=" " is appropriate for small decorative images. Or many
> > large decorative images, for that matter.[/color]
>
> And where is the difference to leaving them out? "" is the default value.[/color]

alt="" means that the image is decorative and has no 'content'.

No alt attribute means that whether the image has 'content' is undefined.

If, historically, the majority of authors had placed alt attributes on
images that needed them, as opposed to leaving them off everything,
then it might be different, but because of the vast number of sites
that don't (or didn't use to) have alt attributes on their images,
browsers need to distinguish between "the author has said this image
is decoration" and "the author hasn't said anything about this image"
for the benefit of their users.
[color=blue][color=green]
> > 2) Users who need them who may be able to sue you for very large
> > amounts of money under the legislation of many countries.[/color]
>
> First of all, this depends entirely on the jurisdiction.[/color]

Well, of course. But US/Australia case-law is in their favour, and the
UK and many other European countries have law (and there's related EU
legislation as well) that is similarly worded.
[color=blue]
> And secondly, nobody is forced to visit a site. If someone does he
> has to obey the "rules of the house".[/color]

Most jurisdictions don't take that view as regards to disability
discrimination.

By analogy it would be technically possible for me to write an
ecommerce site that only sold products to men with a
native-english-family-since-1066 name. I would, however, be
immediately subjected to race and sex discrimination claims if I
tried, and "rules of the house" would not be an adequate defence.
[color=blue][color=green]
> > 4) Clients who don't want suing[/color]
>
> This depends on the jurisdiction.[/color]

Obviously.

In certain jurisdictions (countries without functional government,
say) it's legal to make a website that kills users. That doesn't mean
that you should, or that saying "it's legal in some jurisdictions" is
a justification. Many jurisdictions with lots of web users and clients
certainly don't permit it.
[color=blue][color=green]
> > 5) Clients who care about quality[/color]
>
> Then they shall complain, but then its nevertheless up to THEM![/color]

5a) Clients who expect quality but aren't themselves web experts
(hence their hiring of someone else!) and so wouldn't think to
specifically ask for alt attributes. And, as I said before, shouldn't
have to.

--
Chris

[Spartanicus]

Re: Adding borders...

Alexander Mueller <postmaster@127 .0.0.1> wrote:
[color=blue]
>You can give Jon your advice and suggest to
>implements those tag (AND elements AND attributes ;)) but cant insult
>him nor force him to do that.[/color]

We can't force, but people who do not support and practice standard
compliant cross browser accessible coding will find themselves getting
perpetually criticised in the ciwa* groups, or they end up in twit
filters and lonely.

Accept the nature of this group or leave.

--
Spartanicus

[Alexander Mueller]

Re: Adding borders...

Spartanicus wrote:[color=blue]
>
> We can't force, but people who do not support and practice standard
> compliant cross browser accessible coding will find themselves getting
> perpetually criticised in the ciwa* groups, or they end up in twit
> filters and lonely.[/color]

Attributes like ALT have NOTHING to do with cross browser compatibility.
[color=blue]
>
> Accept the nature of this group or leave.[/color]

Individual newsgroups usually have FAQs which state the general topic of
the group and certain common rules for behaviour.

However, if the nature of most regulars in this group is to criticise
everyone who doesnt blindly accept their rules, then I think actually
the opposite will become true. The group itself will be lonely soon enough.

Alexander

[Chris Morris]

Re: Adding borders...

Alexander Mueller <postmaster@127 .0.0.1> writes:[color=blue]
> Spartanicus wrote:[color=green]
> > We can't force, but people who do not support and practice standard
> > compliant cross browser accessible coding will find themselves getting
> > perpetually criticised in the ciwa* groups, or they end up in twit
> > filters and lonely.[/color]
>
> Attributes like ALT have NOTHING to do with cross browser compatibility.[/color]

1) Download lynx
2) Run lynx
3) Load a site with alt attributes in lynx
4) Load a site without alt attributes in lynx
5) Repeat 3,4 with other sites until convinced that alt attributes
have a lot to do with cross-browser compatibility.

Optionally, use links, w3m, IBM Home Page Reader, JAWS, Opera with the
'text mode' user stylesheet etc. instead of or as well as lynx.
[color=blue][color=green]
> > Accept the nature of this group or leave.[/color]
>
> However, if the nature of most regulars in this group is to criticise
> everyone who doesnt blindly accept their rules, then I think actually
> the opposite will become true. The group itself will be lonely soon
> enough.[/color]

I doubt that. Check the archives for years.

It's not really a case of accepting rules. There is plenty of room
for, and plenty of debate on, *how* to best produce a high-quality
website.

--
Chris

[Alexander Mueller]

Re: Adding borders...

Chris Morris wrote:[color=blue]
>
> 1) Download lynx
> 2) Run lynx
> 3) Load a site with alt attributes in lynx
> 4) Load a site without alt attributes in lynx
> 5) Repeat 3,4 with other sites until convinced that alt attributes
> have a lot to do with cross-browser compatibility.
>
> Optionally, use links, w3m, IBM Home Page Reader, JAWS, Opera with the
> 'text mode' user stylesheet etc. instead of or as well as lynx.[/color]

Seems your only arguments are the most extreme examples. But tell me the
percentage of these browsers. I guess they have much more problems with
Flash, JavaScript, Java, Frames and more than with missing ALT attributes.

But when you take these examples, I am actually wondering how you can
use CSS at, since neither the support in Mosaic nor in Netscape 4 is
very good for CSS ;).
[color=blue]
>
> It's not really a case of accepting rules.[/color]

But Spartanicus just mentioned that.


Alexander

[Steve Pugh]

Re: Adding borders...

Alexander Mueller <postmaster@127 .0.0.1> wrote:[color=blue]
>Chris Morris wrote:[color=green]
>>
>> 1) Download lynx
>> 2) Run lynx
>> 3) Load a site with alt attributes in lynx
>> 4) Load a site without alt attributes in lynx
>> 5) Repeat 3,4 with other sites until convinced that alt attributes
>> have a lot to do with cross-browser compatibility.
>>
>> Optionally, use links, w3m, IBM Home Page Reader, JAWS, Opera with the
>> 'text mode' user stylesheet etc. instead of or as well as lynx.[/color]
>
>Seems your only arguments are the most extreme examples. But tell me the
>percentage of these browsers.[/color]

Who cares? Google is a text browser.
[color=blue]
>I guess they have much more problems with
>Flash, JavaScript, Java, Frames and more than with missing ALT attributes.[/color]

Which is why those items must be made accessible as well. They are all
be used in an accessible fashion by competent authors.
[color=blue]
>But when you take these examples, I am actually wondering how you can
>use CSS at, since neither the support in Mosaic nor in Netscape 4 is
>very good for CSS ;).[/color]

CSS is designed to be 100% optional. Browsers that don't support CSS
at all offer no problems. It's browsers that have buggy CSS support
(NN4, IE6, etc.) that cause problems.

Steve

[Chris Morris]

Re: Adding borders...

Alexander Mueller <postmaster@127 .0.0.1> writes:[color=blue]
> Chris Morris wrote:[color=green]
> > 1) Download lynx
> > 2) Run lynx
> > 3) Load a site with alt attributes in lynx
> > 4) Load a site without alt attributes in lynx
> > 5) Repeat 3,4 with other sites until convinced that alt attributes
> > have a lot to do with cross-browser compatibility.
> > Optionally, use links, w3m, IBM Home Page Reader, JAWS, Opera with
> > the
> > 'text mode' user stylesheet etc. instead of or as well as lynx.[/color]
>
> Seems your only arguments are the most extreme examples.[/color]

Well, to an extent. The average IE user will never see an alt
attribute and won't care. But given the size of the web-using
population, 2-3% is a large number.
[color=blue]
> But tell me the percentage of these browsers. I guess they have much
> more problems with Flash, JavaScript, Java, Frames and more than
> with missing ALT attributes.[/color]

Detecting the percentage of images-off browsers is very tricky. The
1px GIF method of site logging used by
example.freesit ewebstatisticsc ounter.com obviously says 0%, but that's
provably wrong. Web server logs are also inaccurate, of course, for
equally well-known reasons.

For what it's worth, of the page requests in the month to date on a
general-audience web server, assuming [1] complete honesty in UA
strings, I would say about 40% of the hits came from UAs without image
support (mostly search engine robots) but there's also around 1% from
_known_ interactive non-image UAs.

[1] Home Page Reader and JAWS tend to identify themselves as IE, due
to the way they use IE to retrieve and view pages. So it's completely
impossible to find out how many people use those.
[color=blue]
> But when you take these examples, I am actually wondering how you can
> use CSS at, since neither the support in Mosaic nor in Netscape 4 is
> very good for CSS ;).[/color]

Of course. The only thing for which display is guaranteed on the web
is text. Everything else (images, CSS, javascript, graphical design,
etc) can be added for the benefit of the majority with supporting
browsers and due to the design of HTML can be added in such a way that
it doesn't harm the minority with non-supporting browsers.

--
Chris

[Darin McGrew]

Re: Adding borders...

Chris Morris <c.i.morris@dur ham.ac.uk> wrote:[color=blue]
> [1] Home Page Reader and JAWS tend to identify themselves as IE, due
> to the way they use IE to retrieve and view pages. So it's completely
> impossible to find out how many people use those.[/color]

They aren't the only ones. The KeyWeb browser included on the BrailleNote
computers (voice and braille output only) identifies itself as some version
of MSIE with no indication that it might be anything else. Too many stupid
web sites exclude "unsupporte d" browsers for minority browsers to identify
themselves honestly. Even MSIE masquerades as an obsolete version of NN.
--
Darin McGrew, mcgrew@stanford alumni.org, http://www.rahul.net/mcgrew/
Web Design Group, darin@htmlhelp. com, http://www.HTMLHelp.com/

"Red meat isn't bad for you. Fuzzy blue-green meat is bad for you."

[Michael Rozdoba]

Re: Adding borders...

Alexander Mueller wrote:
[color=blue]
> Thats perfectly okay. You can give Jon your advice and suggest to
> implements those tag (AND elements AND attributes ;)) but cant insult
> him nor force him to do that. After all its HIS work, HIS time, HIS
> money and of course HIS decision.[/color]

Irrespective of whether anyone has to date been insulted or merely
described, your statements are incorrect. Of course posters can insult
posters, this is Usenet. Why else is there a long & in most respects
pointless thread running here?

Eventually people will get bored & go away to do something more
productive & hopefully involving less anger & frustration. The OP is
unlikely to get much further help. Other people will. That's how it is.
Works for me, most of the time.

Bye bye.

--
Michael
m r o z a t u k g a t e w a y d o t n e t

[Michael Rozdoba]

Re: Adding borders...

Chris Morris wrote:
[color=blue]
> In certain jurisdictions (countries without functional government,
> say) it's legal to make a website that kills users.[/color]

If you know how to do this, please tell. Preferably along with a good
solution to browser sniffing & info on hacking a frequently used site
such as Google. I have a cunning plan...

--
Michael
m r o z a t u k g a t e w a y d o t n e t

[Chris Morris]

Re: Adding borders...

Michael Rozdoba <mroz@nowhere.i nvalid> writes:[color=blue]
> Chris Morris wrote:[color=green]
> > In certain jurisdictions (countries without functional government,
> > say) it's legal to make a website that kills users.[/color]
>
> If you know how to do this, please tell. Preferably along with a good
> solution to browser sniffing & info on hacking a frequently used site
> such as Google. I have a cunning plan...[/color]

I'm afraid implementation of this step is classified, but I can reveal
that it involves the <marquee> and <blink> elements, or equivalent
functionality. Be careful not to look at the page after you've
written it.

--
Chris

[Alan J. Flavell]

Re: Adding borders...

On Fri, 14 Jan 2005, Michael Rozdoba wrote:
[color=blue]
> Chris Morris wrote:
>[color=green]
> > In certain jurisdictions (countries without functional government,
> > say) it's legal to make a website that kills users.[/color]
>
> If you know how to do this, please tell. Preferably along with a
> good solution to browser sniffing & info on hacking a frequently
> used site such as Google. I have a cunning plan...[/color]

Google finds the full story (albeit with typos) at

http://www.pion.ch/Fun/funniest.html

SCNR

[dan@tobias.name]

Re: Adding borders...


Alexander Mueller wrote:[color=blue]
> Jon asked for a missing border. This was already answered by your[/color]
first[color=blue]
> reply. He did not ask for "nice" advices whether ALT is required or[/color]
not.[color=blue]
> The following posts are just zealotting behaviour.[/color]

He did, however, make some laughable assertions, such as that his site
was "perfectly valid", which basically invited responses showing that
it wasn't.

--
Dan