Re: [CS dev] Help with a CivicSpace Theme Layout... (Read it, you know you want to! :)
On Sat, 2005-11-12 at 10:10 -0500, Liza Sabater wrote:
Hey Trae,
I'm being a bit lazy here but ... for Mac people, can you post a screenshot of what it looks like on IE? I am assuming you mean MS/IE not Mac/IE, which is not being supported AT ALL by Microsoft.
Right, well, I am not supporting IE for Mac, as you said, neither is Microsoft. There are other better and free browsers for OSX [ Firefox / Safari ]
Which brings me to one request : CivicSpaceLabs (that means you ;) ought to offer the option right off the bat to include in the theme a browser sniffer so that people with older browsers can default to a 'downgraded' version of the theme. I cannot stress how important it is for us to move people to Firefox and this should be the way to do so. Please remember that a lot of NGOs don't get new equipment. Usually grassroots NGOs and educational NGOs get donated equipment with outdated software. Let's just educate people to the best options they can have by pointing to the obvious: If you want a better browsing experience, go Firefox.
Pardon my ignorance, NGO? I do understand about donated computers and low end systems as I've worked with groups in the past on issues dealing with Digital Divide problems. The thing is, the more we backwardly rig our websites to work with old, outdated, buggy, insecure browsers, the more problems the web will continue to have. My personal feelings are: Firefox is free, download and install it. Or grab another free browser, or if you want to use Microsoft products, upgrade to IE6. I think we, web developers, spend too much time trying to fix a website so it works on Some browser from 1994. I say make sure your CSS and HTML is validated, and work from there.
Also, and I almost forgot about it, where is Longhorn? There is a looming development and design disaster for a lot of NGOs if Longhorn proves to be as much as a pain in the ass as it's predecessor --no matter how standards compliant they're claiming to be.
Don't even get me started on IE7. :)
This is a huge issue that ought to be address through the development of these themes. It's really not just about how pretty the site is going to look off the box. CivicSpaceLabs should consider addressing the pressing need of saving the already strained resources and man- hours of NGOs and grassroots organizations lost to theme debugging; especially once MicroSoft unleashes it's new OS and browser from hell.
I would actually be all for some sort of browser detection thing if it worked 100% where it educated people to grab a standards compliant browser. But then again, we'd be also telling IE people to get a clue, and most people aren't for that. *sigh* Again, I'd love to have you hang out with us on #cstheme on irc.freenode.net where we can discuss this and other issues to help make the CStheme better. Thanks, Trae
/ liza
On Nov 11 2005, at 09:45 PM, Trae McCombs wrote:
Ok, so let me post a wee bit of information. Please check this URL out first:
http://civicspacelabs.org/home/CivicSpaceTheme
This will, or should, bring you up to date on some of the terms I'm going to be using below. The CivicSpace Theme (CST) is using some new concepts in themeing.
Anyway, my question currently is this.
The Federation Layout looks fine on Firefox, but for some reason it isn't working in IE. Meaning, it doesn't match it's thumbnail. If you simply compare both browsers, and notice how FF looks and IE doesn't then you should see what's wrong. I can't figure out what is causing it. Someone suggested #content, however that only changes the internal body.
Here is the site where I am currently working on things, and the Federation Layout is selected at present:
http://demo.civicspacelabs.org/home/
Also, this may be of some use. It is the Plan of action, or guide we are trying to use for the CST:
http://civicspacelabs.org/home/CivicSpaceThemePlan
Please, feel free to join me on #cstheme on irc.freenode.net and discuss any of these issues. I do look forward to your help.
Thanks, Trae
PS. Kieran (Amazon) says I can blame him for this [and any and all further silly questions I have -- oh wait, maybe he didn't say all of that exactly. :)]
-- Trae "occy" McCombs || http://occy.net/ Founder - Themes.org // Linux.com CivicSpaceLabs - http://civicspacelabs.org/
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-- Trae "occy" McCombs || http://occy.net/ Founder - Themes.org // Linux.com CivicSpaceLabs - http://civicspacelabs.org/
On Mon, 14 Nov 2005 10:12:29 -0500 Trae McCombs <occy@occy.net> wrote:
On Sat, 2005-11-12 at 10:10 -0500, Liza Sabater wrote:
Hey Trae,
I'm being a bit lazy here but ... for Mac people, can you post a screenshot of what it looks like on IE? I am assuming you mean MS/IE not Mac/IE, which is not being supported AT ALL by Microsoft.
AFAIKR the only "real" browser for older macs is IE 5.5. I dont support it, but a friend once showed me all the other options for (older) iMac users: none. Is that true? Should we consider this at all? Should I consiuder this at all? Ber -- Bèr Kessels Drupal services bler.webschuur.com www.webschuur.com ber@jabber.webschuur.com
On Mon, 2005-11-14 at 20:49 +0100, Ber Kessels wrote:
On Mon, 14 Nov 2005 10:12:29 -0500 Trae McCombs <occy@occy.net> wrote:
On Sat, 2005-11-12 at 10:10 -0500, Liza Sabater wrote:
Hey Trae,
I'm being a bit lazy here but ... for Mac people, can you post a screenshot of what it looks like on IE? I am assuming you mean MS/IE not Mac/IE, which is not being supported AT ALL by Microsoft.
AFAIKR the only "real" browser for older macs is IE 5.5. I dont support it, but a friend once showed me all the other options for (older) iMac users: none.
Is that true? Should we consider this at all? Should I consiuder this at all?
Ber
Can't you get Firefox for older Macs? Trae -- Trae "occy" McCombs || http://occy.net/ Founder - Themes.org // Linux.com CivicSpaceLabs - http://civicspacelabs.org/
Trae McCombs wrote:
I'm being a bit lazy here but ... for Mac people, can you post a screenshot of what it looks like on IE? I am assuming you mean MS/IE not Mac/IE, which is not being supported AT ALL by Microsoft.
AFAIKR the only "real" browser for older macs is IE 5.5. I dont support it, but a friend once showed me all the other options for (older) iMac users: none.
Is that true? Should we consider this at all? Should I consiuder this at all?
Can't you get Firefox for older Macs?
Not officially: http://www.mozilla.org/products/firefox/all.html Goba
In all honesty, I don't think you have to worry about old Macs. There is an evolution that *just* happens, and forcing people away from an old, non-standards based browser on a very old Mac is not going to loose too many users. 90% of Mac users use Safari or a Mozilla variant, and those should be the people to concentrate on. You have to bear in mind that IE users on the Mac are used to websites not working properly. Not because the designers do it wrong, but because the browser is sh*t. Justin On 14 Nov 2005, at 20:25, Gabor Hojtsy wrote:
Trae McCombs wrote:
I'm being a bit lazy here but ... for Mac people, can you post a screenshot of what it looks like on IE? I am assuming you mean MS/IE not Mac/IE, which is not being supported AT ALL by Microsoft.
AFAIKR the only "real" browser for older macs is IE 5.5. I dont support it, but a friend once showed me all the other options for (older) iMac users: none.
Is that true? Should we consider this at all? Should I consiuder this at all?
Can't you get Firefox for older Macs?
Not officially: http://www.mozilla.org/products/firefox/all.html
Goba
On Mon, 14 Nov 2005 20:45:57 +0000 Justin Davies <justin@buddyping.com> wrote:
You have to bear in mind that IE users on the Mac are used to websites not working properly. Not because the designers do it wrong, but because the browser is sh*t.
This, is very true! but still, to me it just "feels wrong" to leave people drown in their own sh%t, because they made the wrong choice :). Indeed, we hunted for alternatives on older macs for IE 5.5 and ended up with self-compilable firefoxen, or oddly configured lynxes. But I am not sure if /I/ should bother about these couple of poor bastards :). I dont even "officially support" ie 5 for windows anymore. as of this month! Does anyone know any? Id love to point some users to them. But to me, this chapter is closed with: get these poor folks a foudantion, donate some funds to get them a non-MS browser and stop nagging aboout that horribly broken one. Ber -- Bèr Kessels Drupal services bler.webschuur.com www.webschuur.com ber@jabber.webschuur.com
Ber, There is a time to let things go, and the time for IE on the Mac is now. Don't feel guilty. Think about it as a public service to the rest of the world. You are helping to stop web designers having to worry about IE on the Mac (now they only have to concentrate on IE for Win!) It is the same thing as asking how many Apple G3 processor machines are out there? Maybe 1% of Macs ? If that is that case, does that mean you have to sacrifice the speed of delivery for 99% of people because you need to make it work for the 1% ? Let it go, don't feel guilty. Justin On 14 Nov 2005, at 20:59, Ber Kessels wrote:
On Mon, 14 Nov 2005 20:45:57 +0000 Justin Davies <justin@buddyping.com> wrote:
You have to bear in mind that IE users on the Mac are used to websites not working properly. Not because the designers do it wrong, but because the browser is sh*t.
This, is very true! but still, to me it just "feels wrong" to leave people drown in their own sh%t, because they made the wrong choice :).
Indeed, we hunted for alternatives on older macs for IE 5.5 and ended up with self-compilable firefoxen, or oddly configured lynxes. But I am not sure if /I/ should bother about these couple of poor bastards :). I dont even "officially support" ie 5 for windows anymore. as of this month!
Does anyone know any? Id love to point some users to them.
But to me, this chapter is closed with: get these poor folks a foudantion, donate some funds to get them a non-MS browser and stop nagging aboout that horribly broken one.
Ber -- Bèr Kessels Drupal services bler.webschuur.com www.webschuur.com ber@jabber.webschuur.com
+1 On Mon, 2005-11-14 at 21:19 +0000, Justin Davies wrote:
Ber,
There is a time to let things go, and the time for IE on the Mac is now. Don't feel guilty. Think about it as a public service to the rest of the world. You are helping to stop web designers having to worry about IE on the Mac (now they only have to concentrate on IE for Win!)
It is the same thing as asking how many Apple G3 processor machines are out there? Maybe 1% of Macs ? If that is that case, does that mean you have to sacrifice the speed of delivery for 99% of people because you need to make it work for the 1% ?
Let it go, don't feel guilty.
Justin
On 14 Nov 2005, at 20:59, Ber Kessels wrote:
On Mon, 14 Nov 2005 20:45:57 +0000 Justin Davies <justin@buddyping.com> wrote:
You have to bear in mind that IE users on the Mac are used to websites not working properly. Not because the designers do it wrong, but because the browser is sh*t.
This, is very true! but still, to me it just "feels wrong" to leave people drown in their own sh%t, because they made the wrong choice :).
Indeed, we hunted for alternatives on older macs for IE 5.5 and ended up with self-compilable firefoxen, or oddly configured lynxes. But I am not sure if /I/ should bother about these couple of poor bastards :). I dont even "officially support" ie 5 for windows anymore. as of this month!
Does anyone know any? Id love to point some users to them.
But to me, this chapter is closed with: get these poor folks a foudantion, donate some funds to get them a non-MS browser and stop nagging aboout that horribly broken one.
Ber -- Bèr Kessels Drupal services bler.webschuur.com www.webschuur.com ber@jabber.webschuur.com
-- Trae "occy" McCombs || http://occy.net/ Founder - Themes.org // Linux.com CivicSpaceLabs - http://civicspacelabs.org/
At 9:19 PM +0000 14/11/05, Justin Davies wrote:
It is the same thing as asking how many Apple G3 processor machines are out there? Maybe 1% of Macs ? If that is that case, does that mean you have to sacrifice the speed of delivery for 99% of people because you need to make it work for the 1% ?
Here are some real stats for two sites: Site 1: 43,703 out of 2,830,400 hits (1.54%) were IE5/Mac users. Site 2: 23,175 out of 2,678,670 hits (0.09%) were IE5/Mac users. Nearly half the Mac users were using IE5. ...R.
Ok, I'm sorry I started this thread. I think we should take this off-line to IRC or something. This is opening a keg of nails and you aren't going to get people to agree on this subject. Thanks, Trae On Tue, 2005-11-15 at 10:33 +1100, Richard Archer wrote:
At 9:19 PM +0000 14/11/05, Justin Davies wrote:
It is the same thing as asking how many Apple G3 processor machines are out there? Maybe 1% of Macs ? If that is that case, does that mean you have to sacrifice the speed of delivery for 99% of people because you need to make it work for the 1% ?
Here are some real stats for two sites:
Site 1: 43,703 out of 2,830,400 hits (1.54%) were IE5/Mac users. Site 2: 23,175 out of 2,678,670 hits (0.09%) were IE5/Mac users.
Nearly half the Mac users were using IE5.
...R. -- Trae "occy" McCombs || http://occy.net/ Founder - Themes.org // Linux.com CivicSpaceLabs - http://civicspacelabs.org/
Richard Archer wrote:
Site 1: 43,703 out of 2,830,400 hits (1.54%) were IE5/Mac users. Personally I'd make an effort to support IE5mac on this site... Site 2: 23,175 out of 2,678,670 hits (0.09%) were IE5/Mac users. but not this one.
Nearly half the Mac users were using IE5. That's just shocking!
Trae, we are in agreement about this I think - it just comes down to the audience on a site by site basis, and how much effort it takes to make IE5mac work with your particular design/features. -- adrinux (aka Adrian Simmons) <http://adrinux.perlucida.com> e-mail <mailto:adrinux@gmail.com> AOL/Yahoo IM: perlucida, Microsoft: adrian@perlucida.com
Justin Davies wrote:
In all honesty, I don't think you have to worry about old Macs. Well, maybe, maybe not. It really all depends on a particular site and what the audience uses. Macs are reliable, they often go on for years and years. There are plenty out there still in active use.
forcing people away from an old, non-standards based browser on a very old Mac is not going to loose too many users. I hate to be in the position of defending a Microsoft browser but lets set some records straight here.
IE5 mac is an entirely different product from IE5 on Windows. At the time IE5 mac was released it had *the* *most* *complete* web standards support of *any* available browser. Better than Mozilla, Opera, Konqueror, better than all of them.
90% of Mac users use Safari or a Mozilla variant, and those should be the people to concentrate on. 90% of *OS X* users. There are still plenty of people out there using OS 9. As a percentage of the web they may be small, but they are there. IE5 mac is remains the best browser available for OS 9. The last versions of Mozilla available on OS 9 were around Mozilla 1.3 IIRC, and at that point Mozilla was still bloated and buggy.
You have to bear in mind that IE users on the Mac are used to websites not working properly. Nonsense. I find most of them still work fairly well, its really only quite advanced CSS layouts that start to break.
Not because the designers do it wrong, but because the browser is sh*t. Not true. That's really over stepping the mark. IE5mac is a solid browser. So good that despite my antipathy to Microsoft it was my main browser on OS 9 for quite some time, and even on OS X when it first came out.
Yes it's a dead browser. Yes OS 9 is a dead OS. Yes it has some shortcomings in the CSS department. Yes it has other major flaws (can't control plugins with javascript for one). Both have been superseded by better things. But lets not reject IE5mac on the basis of opinionated foul-mouthed nonsense like this. We're about building communities, and communities are diverse things. There are workarounds if the problem is with CSS, eg: http://www.premonition.co.uk/cssd/ie51-only.html Javascript gets a bit trickier, but we try to make sure that degrades gracefully anyway. It all boils down to this - IE5mac is decent browser used by people on an old OS, they make up a small and diminishing part of the webs population. If there is a simple and quick way of fixing problems with it then lets support it, and conversely if it's taking too much time to fix let it go. But at least make an informed decision instead of rejecting it out of hand. -- adrinux (aka Adrian Simmons) <http://adrinux.perlucida.com> e-mail <mailto:adrinux@gmail.com> AOL/Yahoo IM: perlucida, Microsoft: adrian@perlucida.com
Adrian, I did not mean my response to be foul mouthed, but we both got the same conclusion: if it is too much hassle let it go. We just got there through different routes. I did not mean to offend anyone with my response. I am fully aware of having to accommodate what I would term "legacy" systems, but unfortunately the web is not a case of lowest common denominator like some systems, but rather the most widely used systems, and IE5 on OS9/X is not it. If it is a case of "a few minutes and it will work on IE5", then I am all for people trying to support it. If it is a case that it takes 2 more weeks to push a feature, or design, then it really is a waste of time for all concerned when talking about the number we are talking about. Justin On 14 Nov 2005, at 22:52, Adrian Simmons wrote:
Justin Davies wrote:
In all honesty, I don't think you have to worry about old Macs. Well, maybe, maybe not. It really all depends on a particular site and what the audience uses. Macs are reliable, they often go on for years and years. There are plenty out there still in active use.
forcing people away from an old, non-standards based browser on a very old Mac is not going to loose too many users. I hate to be in the position of defending a Microsoft browser but lets set some records straight here.
IE5 mac is an entirely different product from IE5 on Windows. At the time IE5 mac was released it had *the* *most* *complete* web standards support of *any* available browser. Better than Mozilla, Opera, Konqueror, better than all of them.
90% of Mac users use Safari or a Mozilla variant, and those should be the people to concentrate on. 90% of *OS X* users. There are still plenty of people out there using OS 9. As a percentage of the web they may be small, but they are there. IE5 mac is remains the best browser available for OS 9. The last versions of Mozilla available on OS 9 were around Mozilla 1.3 IIRC, and at that point Mozilla was still bloated and buggy.
You have to bear in mind that IE users on the Mac are used to websites not working properly. Nonsense. I find most of them still work fairly well, its really only quite advanced CSS layouts that start to break.
Not because the designers do it wrong, but because the browser is sh*t. Not true. That's really over stepping the mark. IE5mac is a solid browser. So good that despite my antipathy to Microsoft it was my main browser on OS 9 for quite some time, and even on OS X when it first came out.
Yes it's a dead browser. Yes OS 9 is a dead OS. Yes it has some shortcomings in the CSS department. Yes it has other major flaws (can't control plugins with javascript for one). Both have been superseded by better things. But lets not reject IE5mac on the basis of opinionated foul-mouthed nonsense like this.
We're about building communities, and communities are diverse things.
There are workarounds if the problem is with CSS, eg: http:// www.premonition.co.uk/cssd/ie51-only.html
Javascript gets a bit trickier, but we try to make sure that degrades gracefully anyway.
It all boils down to this - IE5mac is decent browser used by people on an old OS, they make up a small and diminishing part of the webs population. If there is a simple and quick way of fixing problems with it then lets support it, and conversely if it's taking too much time to fix let it go. But at least make an informed decision instead of rejecting it out of hand.
-- adrinux (aka Adrian Simmons) <http://adrinux.perlucida.com> e-mail <mailto:adrinux@gmail.com> AOL/Yahoo IM: perlucida, Microsoft: adrian@perlucida.com
On 14 Nov 2005, at 2:52 PM, Adrian Simmons wrote:
Justin Davies wrote:
In all honesty, I don't think you have to worry about old Macs. Well, maybe, maybe not. It really all depends on a particular site and what the audience uses. Macs are reliable, they often go on for years and years. There are plenty out there still in active use.
Hmm, unless you have a need to support old mac users in particular, I wouldn't feel too guilty about dropping support for Mac IE5 (OS9/OS X). After all, both Microsoft and Apple dropped support for it long ago. Djun P.S. on a 'would be funny if it weren't so painful' note - I had to use a provincial government/ public service site the other day that refused to let me use anything other than IE5+. When I complained, the person responsible told me this policy was 'to ensure security' :) I elected to transact my correspondence via snail mail.
participants (7)
-
Adrian Simmons -
Ber Kessels -
Gabor Hojtsy -
Justin Davies -
puregin -
Richard Archer -
Trae McCombs