[ZWeb] Re: website design discussion

[Martijn Faassen]

Tom Von Lahndorff wrote:
> 
> "semi-stretchable"
> 
> Would be nice if IE supported min-width and max-width in css. It 
> doesn't. The only way I've seen anyone get that to work in IE is with 
> some nasty javascript hack. We can keep going down this road though, 
> fine with me. We'll be here for literally weeks and months going through 
> all of the pros and cons of fixed vs. fluid layouts that have been 
> debated for years. There is no right answer.

I'm not out to discuss this stuff for weeks and months at all, I'm just 
asking fairly reasonable questions from the perspective of someone who 
doesn't know much about the intricacies of web site layouts. To answer 
my own question, it's clear from your response it *is* very difficult to 
make it semi stretchable, so we will let it be for now. We can always 
come back to it later.

[snip]
> p.p.s. I will be working on the Linux rendering issues which is actually 
> a good example of the real challenges with web design. Getting a 
> standards based site to look good on IE an Firefox on a PC is a 
> (nightmarish at times) challenge alone (mostly thanks to IE's lack of 
> standards support). Getting it to work on every browser on every OS and 
> look good is a boatload of work. My focus is to do just that while 
> keeping the html and css *clean* and free of hacks and javascript as 
> much as possible. Also, keeping the html reusable to easily implement 
> future design changes and as maintenance free as possible.

I'm surprised Firefox on linux is so different from Firefox on other 
platforms.

[snip]

> Right now the biggest problem that Zope, zope.org as well as other zope 
> products/properties suffers from is useability and marketing. The least 
> of any problems is what color the sites are, whether the pages are fluid 
> or fixed width or whatever. The real problem is that no knows what Zope 
> is, how it works or how to use the sites. 

Look, you're doing a web design and you can reasonably expect some 
feedback from people. It's not a complete disaster. Ranting about how 
terrible I am for asking a few simple questions is not very productive 
either. If something is hard to do or unwise, I'm sure it can be 
communicated in a way that's a little bit less confrontational. Sorry 
for the rant back. :)

> Lets get past these basic design issues, get a test site up and running 
> and start getting our hands dirty. Lets implement the html and css and 
> then get down to brass tacks and start the *real* work of editorializing 
> the content so that it's understandable to newcomers as well as 
> veterans, making content easily accessible and clearly labeled, 
> providing easy to use interfaces and functionality. 

This is exactly what I'm doing. I'm already editorializing content, it's 
just that nobody seems to be very interested in discussing *that* on 
this mailing list so far.

Anyway, quite apart from this mini-debate, I'm still grateful for your 
efforts, so thank you again.

Regards,

Martijn