Re: Taking a step back for a moment......

["Fred Oliveira (aka kript0n)" <fboliv student dei uc pt>]

On Wed, 22 Nov 2000, Joakim Ziegler wrote:

> On Wed, Nov 22, 2000 at 01:20:10PM +0530, Sai Kiran wrote:
> 
> >> 1. Navigation
> >> we don't need to plan out elaborate schemas for navigation.  Just a
> >> simple one that works.  I think that we have basically all agreed that
> >> we should organize navigation by task.  This makes sense, as this is how
> >> people want to use websites.  I agree with Shawn Admunsun that we want
> >> to make the names short and easily scannable.  I also think that it
> >> should be text-based.  If we want to get fancy, we can do a javascript
> >> tree expansion type thing so someone can (if they have a browser that
> >> supports it) get to the page they want right away.  This wouldn't stop
> >> normal users from getting there in a normal fashion though.
>  
> > 	I really think we should try to avoid JavaScript etc. More so
> > because this is a technology developed by the browser makers. Please try
> > looking at a page with pop-up layer based menu in IE 3.0 or something. It
> > totally destroys the page's look. Even if we decide to do something fancy,
> > let us try to avoid JavaScript and DHTML. What do people think about a
> > Java Applet ?
> 
> Using Java for navigation is totally broken. Using DHTML/JavaScript is
> better, but should really be avoided too (I succumbed to the temptation on
> the existing www.gnome.org pages, and it works great under browsers that
> support it, but it sucks on older ones. Not that I think that's a must, but
> it often happens).
> 
> By the way, avoiding something because it's "a technology developed by the
> browser makers" is totally lame, in particular considering that 90% of the
> widely deployed web technologies that work fall into that category, and the
> W3C takes a lot of its inspiration from the browser makers. But I digress.
> 

The way i see things, the gnome website should focus on portability. That
means allowing users on all kinds of browsers to actually see some
content. Well, as you may figure by new, a dhtml navigation system is not
supported on all browsers. Neither is the javascript one. What i mean is
that, i, as so much many gnome users and enthusiasts, visit the gnome.org
pages in lynx, when no other browser is available, and therefore, a good
navigation system, in plain HTML gets the job done with ease. 

Another idea i came up with, for these cases, is a browser detection
system (which is coded in less then 5 minutes) that redirects users to a
"text-only" page in case of browsers such as lynx, etc, or a "heavy
weight" page for users on netscape, mozilla, among others. This would make
every user happy (IMO) and is very easy to do, as for all the content is
dynamic and therefore there isn't the need to type all the things, for
both versions of the pages. 

-- 
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    Frederico Oliveira - aka kript0n

     Email: kript0n boxnetwork net
            kript0n mail box sk
            fboliv student dei uc pt

     irc.box.sk:6667 -> #neworder
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