Ugly Pages

Áine on November 30th, 2003 filed in Pixel Pixies

Ever wonder if your Web pages are being seen as you coded them? Beyond going through all the validators and looking at it in as many browsers as you can get your hands on, there’s one more thing you can do. Try setting the background color in your favorite browser to something other than the default white (mine’s set to grey).

You’d be surprised how many webmasters forget to set a body background color. Some who should know better, too.

Technorati Tags: Pixel Pixies

22 Responses to “Ugly Pages”

Allen Says:
November 30th, 2003 at 6:04 pm
Quite a few web masters overlook this — but, then again, how many web masters can honestly be said to -really- know what they’re doing?

It’s always interesting to slide around the Internet in lynx or via some other text-only browser to see how the markup holds up organizationally and with regards to readability.

Regarding a web site I maintain, well over half the users are at least viewing via IE6 but IE 5 and N4 follow in popularity. So, naturally, it is essential that I keep backward’s compatibility in mind. Several web designers with the same audience do not take such things in to consideration and what, in decent browsers, looks terrible only becomes unreadable as we step backwards in the browser time line.
Aine Says:
November 30th, 2003 at 6:50 pm
“Quite a few web masters overlook this — but, then again, how many web masters can honestly be said to -really- know what they’re doing?”

*grins* True. I don’t even really know what I’m doing, but… I’m learning. I’m correcting my own mistakes little by little. I’m devouring the best tips and tricks about web design I can find on the Web and trying to infuse some of that wisdom into my own pages. Some of my domain will probably never be Web Standards compliant… the old stuff, for example, mainly because the CMS I used wasn’t completely Standards-compliant in it’s hard-coding, and at this point, it would mean taking it all down and beginning again, or finding a willing programmer to help me dissect the code and fix it. Someday, I may do that, but the prospect of going through thousands of lines of code just to put in the correct BREAK tags (and other minor nuances to meet the validator’s rigid requirements) isn’t very appealing at this point, considering how much content my site has.

Eventually, I may just end up saving all my content to my hard drive and reuploading it in some other format that meets Standards. Link management may be a problem, though. There are nearly 600 links to outside sites just in my main site.
Afonso Says:
December 1st, 2003 at 3:06 pm
It’s really sad when pages are not shown exactly as we intended in different browsers but I think that this matter should be considered in propotion to the number of visitors a site gets. If you’re building an institutional or government site that is visited by thousands of people you should take that in consideration. But if you’re building a blog or personal site that is visited by only a few hundred people it doesn’t make any sense that you spend days reading all that W3C stuff or you will spend more time with the layout that actually blogging. Concidentially the most read portuguese blogs have very plain layouts and are still visited by thousands. All visitors deserve equal respect but our audience should take that in consideration. To have an all compliant site only read by a few is like having a palace for the use of just a few. A waste of time and resources. My arguments might seem a bit arrogant but please take into consideration that I live in a small country with limited resources and I was taught at school that the sucessfull use of limited resources is what makes the difference. Do the best you can with what you have. And I know. This sentence sounds really ugly in a country where energetic resources are proudly wasted…
Aine Says:
December 1st, 2003 at 3:51 pm
@Afonso : What sounds arrogant is that you’re basically saying you aren’t willing to take the time to learn Web Standards, which would ensure that your site will be viewable in the future, and your rationalization for that seems to be the number of visitors you get and the relative size and economic position of your country. Sounds like excuses to me, but if that’s your choice, that’s your choice. *shrugs*

Learning Web Standards costs no money, just your time… and no one said you had to learn them overnight. The info is available on the Web for free to anyone in any country anywhere in the world. The resources are there for all, if you choose not to use them, you’re wasting the resources that are available to you. I enjoy learning new things, and I teach myself something new just about every week.

How many visitors you get now is no indication of future prospects, if it were, why would any webmaster (especially the newbies) bother to build anything at all?
Afonso Says:
December 1st, 2003 at 9:39 pm
Aine, I do think compliance is important but let’s use some common sense. Aside from fluent english speakers (to whom is already a pain to go thru all the W3C standards and find the correct information), who in his perfect mind will try to make a 99% compliant blog just to write about his/her daily life? See what I am trying to say?
Only professional web designers or people who take the design of their site as a serious matter will try to make their pages compliant. Not the common bloggers, the ones that write a few entries per week. I recently read in study about blogs that most blogs die in the first 4 months after being created. And that the most active bloggers only write a few entries per week. So if most people don’t even care about the content of their pages how will they care about W3C compliance? Most bloggers don’t even change the standard layout (argghh). Like I said in the other comment. Compliance makes sense for medium/large sized sites. Small sites seem to be the largest majority of internet sites so what will W3C do to make all sites compliant? Will we all have to learn those standards? But, that’s why blogs are so popular, because common people with little knowledge of internet technlogies can publish their ideas on the web!
Aine Says:
December 2nd, 2003 at 7:05 am
Well, let’s put it this way. If you still want to be able to view and build your pages in five to ten years, would you rather have to rebuild them all over and over again as MS changes things in it’s browser further and further away from Standards, or would you rather build it to current Standards once and be assured that you’ll be able to continue to view it and build on it in the future? If your blog is only going to last four months, it doesn’t much matter because most people won’t bother to look at a blog that was built years ago and didn’t continue.

Size of the site doesn’t matter, really, unless you’re planning to only have a page or two. But even then, plans can change. My site started out with one page. Today there’s enough reading there to last an average user at least 6-8 hours. That content has only been there for a little over one year.

One year… think about that.
Afonso Says:
December 3rd, 2003 at 12:46 am
Ok, you’re right and I am wrong. I just don’t like that an international institution tells me how I should or shouldn’t build a personal page. That’s none of their business. It’s up for personal owners if they want or not to learn all W3C stuff and make their page compliant. Because for now it’s all about recomendations, but they surely want them to be rules. BTW, I checked the code of my blog using their tool and 102 errors just seem too much to me! Especially when some of the errors are about pieces of code pasted from well known sites like Google. I also don’t feel in the mood to go to the MT foruns and say that the code provided by Movable Type is full of “errors”. Well, let’s see how it all evolves, but I don’t feel like wasting my time reading rules that aren’t followed by anyone. Have you tried to validate sites like Google, Yahoo, etc. ? The results are very funny.

And yes, little pages can turn out big. I know that very well by experience.
Aine Says:
December 3rd, 2003 at 8:45 am
Oh, I know! A *lot* of big sites online don’t validate and are full of errors. *grins* Some of them are diligently working to improve that, others aren’t even aware there’s a problem. One of the problems is that people aren’t thinking far enough ahead, and this is how Bill Gates made his billions of dollars… he thinks way ahead and figures out ways of gaining an advantage that will be profitable to his company. If you could contain the internet content so that people could only see it using your products, wouldn’t you try it? I would. Think of all the ad and licensing revenue he could gain for his company. MS is also working with some of the hardware manufacturers to ensure that this happens… they were calling it the Palladium initiative, but renamed it to something like “Trust Network”, but it amounts to the same thing. MSIE users will eventually only see “trusted” content, in effect, caging them in.

If webmasters would refuse to put work-arounds in their pages for IE, and build to web standards, it would shift the burden back onto companies like MS to make their browsers and authoring tools meet the standards they agreed to support. It’s not unheard of for the “popular” browser to shift allegiances to another company… at one time, netscape was the most popular browser on the internet when MS used to charge money for it’s browser. IE is popular today for two reasons: 1)they decided to quit charging money for IE, and 2)IE is built into every Windows computer, so it’s convenient for people to just use that instead of looking for, downloading, and installing an alternative… even when the alternatives are better products. This is what the anti-trust lawsuit and judgment against MS was all about; them using their operating system integrated with their own browser to gain an unfair advantage in the field of internet browsers. They lost, which forced them to separate the browser from the operating system, so that people would still have a choice. Still, it isn’t stopping MS from trying every method they can think of to keep IE on users’ desktops.
Aine Says:
December 3rd, 2003 at 8:48 am
WindowsUpdate, for example… it only works if you’re using IE. They won’t let Mozilla users access WindowsUpdate.
Afonso Says:
December 3rd, 2003 at 10:28 am
Well Aine, I can’t say I love Microsoft. In fact in my first days of computing I had to wait about 3 months for my windows 95 replacement discs to arrive from Ireland (those were the days in which I didn’t even know what an anti-virus was). I imagine how it would have been if they didn’t have a local support center near where I live. This is to say that this kind of support is only possible to a big company like Microsoft. A big company that cares about their customers. HP for example greets all users needing support in spanish(!). Sure. I buy a computer, need support and go learn spanish just because something is wrong with my pc. You guessed. Their support center for Portugal is located in Spain. But let me go straight to the point. Like you said Netscape was a very popular browser in the first days. So I tried to use it. I began to use the portuguese-brazilian version. I was disapointed how such a popular browser didn’t care to have a portuguese version. For you to have an of how irritating it is to use a brazilian-portuguese version of something, just imagine that you were reading a text full of grammar and vocabulary errors. That’s how brazilian-portuguese is for us. It’s like it was written by a small child still learning how to write. Most of the times I prefer to use the english version of a software than the brazilian version. A good example of this is in blogging. Most portuguese bloggers prefer to use the american version of blogger instead of the brazilian one. Also in college some of my colleagues prefered to study from the original english books than to use a brazilian translation. That says a lot hey? Continuing with Netscape. I decided to e-mail them. Not even a “we will think in your suggestion” answer. The comment is already long, so what I mean by all this is the following: Microsoft might look as a monster but their worldwide sucess is because they work very close with local markets. They promote local employment and they are always looking for partnerships with local companies. About MS caging us. Humm, I think the opposite. I think that if that’s what they want they will end up caging themselves. If one day I have to change browser I would use Opera. The european browser that has a portuguese version. Too bad we have to pay to use it. Sorry the long comment.
Afonso Says:
December 3rd, 2003 at 11:01 am
Me again, hehe…Just to add something. Most people complain about MS products not being secure and full of holes. True. And the blue screens suck. A few years ago I decided to only use non-MS products. First problems I had were while installing Red Hat. My monitor was not compatible I guess. Or maybe I wasn’t compatible with Red Hat. By then I began to value the effort behind windows. An application that correctely works with so many different systems and peripherals. There was also the time I decided to use other e-mail application. Then again I regreted it. I imagine that most computer users are just like me. It’s not because they’re lazy that they don’t look for other programs. Of course time is very important nowadays. The lack of it. But it also is because MS products integrate themselves in such a way with the computer that it enriches our experience. When someone buys a pc they want it to work with little effort. Not to spend hours learning about how to install an operating system, how to install an e-mail program, or to learn all W3C rules. For some it is already a pain to learn the basics. That’s how I see Microsoft. A company that wants to simplify all aspects about using a pc and turn it in an enjoyable experience. There’s the security problems and so, but I guess it’s hard to find a plataform that is enjoyable to use and secure at the same time.
Aine Says:
December 3rd, 2003 at 11:16 am
Expecting all software to be in all languages is an unreasonable expectation, I think. I don’t think -all- of MS software even achieves that. Keep in mind, too, that a lot of the available software is due to voluntary efforts of code hackers (white hat), and it is usually up to the users to create language implementations for much of that software. Microsoft can do that only because they employ and pay so many people, but you won’t find the same kind of thing in smaller software companies simply because they cannot afford to hire the staff.

On the other hand, recently Microsoft has indicated that it is willing to look at the open-source model for Longhorn, but it’s doubtful Longhorn will truly be open-source. Still, it indicates that certain departments within Microsoft are willing to admit that there are times when open-source can accomplish things that proprietary models (companies) cannot. Linux (and all it’s flavors) is a prime example of the world’s largest cooperative volunteer software effort on the planet, and it’s stability is almost legendary, especially compared to Windows Server software.

W3C is owned by no single company or country. Their agenda is non-company specific and has a forward-thinking model. They aren’t dictating anything to anyone. All they’re trying to do is come up with a set of standards that all companies and users can agree on so that content may be served up properly (visible, audible, etc.) far into the future, regardless of how our technology changes. Any user may contribute to the project. If translations are needed, anyone may volunteer to do so.

Netscape as an ongoing software is dead. AOL (the owner) decided to stop work on it (which was a mistake, imho). Mozilla is the open-source branch of Netscape (as of 1998). Opera uses the Mozilla Gecko engine in it’s browser (as far as I know), and it is currently the -most- compliant as far as W3C Web Standards go, but *none* of the current browsers are 100% compliant yet. It’s a goal to strive for… sort of a mark of excellence.

You said you had 101 errors? Yeah, I had like 124 when I started. It isn’t anything inherent in MT’s code that’s giving those errors. It’s entries and additions to the sidebar that give a lot of errors. Things like image files (if you forget to end them with a space and a slash inside the tag), “and” symbols (those must be spelled out in ascii form), javascripts that don’t specify type=”text/javascript”, and other nitpicky things like that. The list of errors may seem daunting at first, and you may just give up in disgust, but I can tell you from my limited experience that once you start at the top of the error list and begin correcting things, that list shrinks rapidly.
I have to re-validate my pages several times a week, but I’m training myself to begin learning to do things the Standards way, and I’ve often avoided a page full of errors just by figuring out what those nitpicky things are and coding them correctly before I rebuild the template (even if the code given to me by another website is incorrect, I can often fix it so it’s going to validate and still work right).

I’m learning a lot. I think November was like, major enlightenment month for me as far as web design goes. *grins*
Afonso Says:
December 3rd, 2003 at 11:28 am
BTW, the fact that Netscape didn’t answer my e-mail was like an insult for me. It was like they were saying: Brazilians are 150 million, you’re just 10 million, so you worth shit. HP in Spain is the same. These little things make the difference and tell a lot about companies. Have they ever heard of “think globally, but act locally?”
Afonso Says:
December 3rd, 2003 at 11:36 am
LOL Aine. Well it was a hard month for me, but sure I also learned a lot about web design too. Moving to MT was a big change. I guess the NaNoWriMo thing was just an excuse for me to begin blogging again. I spent most of the time designing blogs instead of writing. And it was kind of strange to start all over from scratch.
Aine Says:
December 3rd, 2003 at 11:48 am
Yeah, my NaNoWriMo novel didn’t get very far at all… but then, I thought, I’m learning all this other stuff right now, so it’s not like I’m wasting time playing games or anything. The novel can wait, I’m in no hurry to write it, but I haven’t abandoned it entirely either.
Afonso Says:
December 3rd, 2003 at 11:56 am
Sure you’re right about only major companies being able to translate software in local languages, but you’re forgetting about something very important. They have partnerships with local companies. They promote local employment. They train local employees. And sure you’re right about volunteers translating software, but what to say of companies like HP that only think in profits? If they can’t provide a good service than they better not sell to other countries. Besides I don’t think it’s that hard to find someone able to translate to several languages instead of just one. Morgaine for example. She fluently speaks several languages. I can’t believe a company like Netscape wasn’t able to hire someone that speaks portuguese. Opera is nice. I was forced to use it for sometime when blogshares was slow. It crashed so many times I had to unistall it. It sounds weird, bu the most stable software I used so far is from MS. Maybe because software and hardware manufacturers design their products with this in mind?
I will try to make my blog compliant. The 3 columns were pasted from their code. Ironic as it sounds I searched all the net in search of nice tips and found that the W3C code was the most reliable and easy to use. What doesn’t mean that it is fixed. The new layout is making me white hairs. For some reason I ignore it doesn’t behave correctely at lower resolutions. And it isn’t an overlaping issue.
Afonso Says:
December 3rd, 2003 at 11:58 am
I am thinking of writing it this month.
Aine Says:
December 3rd, 2003 at 3:56 pm
They might have localization, but it doesn’t extend to where I live. LOL
Afonso Says:
December 3rd, 2003 at 5:26 pm
“They might have localization, but it doesn’t extend to where I live.”

The 3 columns or MS? Or both?…hehe
Afonso Says:
December 3rd, 2003 at 5:42 pm
Have you read this?
http://www.techworld.com/news/index.cfm?fuseaction=displaynews&NewsID=725

Be afraid, be very afraid.

ALL YOUR BASE ARE BELONG TO US
Aine Says:
December 3rd, 2003 at 7:25 pm
Yeah, AOL just started up a blogging service too.

LMAO

It only took the corporations, what?, about five years to catch on.
Afonso Says:
December 4th, 2003 at 6:51 am
In Portugal only a few weeks ago the most important ISP provided a free blogging service. On the other hand, a third world country like Brazil already provides free blogging services for more than a year. According to rumours they are already in phase 2, i.e., now that consumers are fidelized they are thinking of charging for the service.
I believe that big companies in US and Europe had a lot more to loose, so only now that there’s enough evidence that this will be a profitable business they decided to offer services in this area. I don’t know about US but big telecomunications companies in Europe had to pay a big price for third generation cellular phones and have huge debts so I think they are being very cautious about new tendencies and businesses.