₦airaland Forum

Sam,

Why not hiss in dutch?

yep dhtml,

Everything doesn't have to boil down to javascript

dhtml,

So they are no longer called "pew" water phones?

Between personal runs and moderating this board, it has been very busy for me and so I haven't been able to post lessons and quizzes. I managed to squeeze a few minutes out today and so, here it goes:

If you are like me and use CSS for layout, you probably add your logo as a background image, as opposed to embedding the logo on the page via the IMG tag. Going the CSS route has the advantage of reducing html code on your pages, among others.

If you are also like me, then you are probably frustrated that if you go the CSS background image route, you can't make your logos clickable, which is something that is good from a user experience standpoint.

Here is some nifty code I found that you may also find useful:

given the following code:

//html tags, etc go here

<style>
#header { width:990px; height:124px; background:url(/images/logo.jpg) no-repeat;}
</style>

//html tags go here
<div id="container">
<div id="header"></div>
</div>

You can make that logo.jpg clickable by adding a faux-link by modifying the code above like so:

//html tags, etc go here

<style>

#header { position: relative; width:990px; height:124px; background:url(/new-images/header.jpg) no-repeat; }
#header a { position: absolute; top: 0; left: 0; width:990px; height:124px; }
#header h1#header-link { display: none; }
</style>

//html tags go here
<div id="container">
<div id="header">
<a href="/" title="Home"><h1 id="header-link">Click to go back to home page</h1></a>
</div>
</div>

NOTE:
1) the #header a declaration has the same width and height with #header
2) the H1 within the #header A tag is set to display: none;

Try it out and if you can't get the above to work, post your questions here.

Here's to hoping we have all learned something from this. Hopefully, I will have some more time to devote to more such lessons.

First off, just like with anything in life, you don't jump for something just because someone has a sweet mouth. Smart money says you should do your own research, preferably talking to those you know who have received similar service, then make your mind based on that. Trust, but verify.

and talking about search engines running away from table and cuddling css,
i know thats false, why not show me a link on say Google Webmaster Central that supports ur claim.

If you know that's false, why not jump first by showing us a link to your claim? By the way, I personally wouldn't say search engines "run away" in favor of CSS but that they find it harder to "chew" such pages - too many html tags. CSS is cleaner. This is a fact. What did you say? Show you proof? Pull up any page that uses tables (like yours) and pull up a page that uses 100% CSS and come back and lie to us you could better follow the former.

am glad u said it's not outdated as opposed to the impression created by cnario

It is outdated depending on what you want to use it for

and for the note, if you were talking about saving some kilobyte, you probably must have weighted out ur thoughts, thats ok.

It's more than ok - I check my site on a site analyzer and believe me, I have seen and appreciate the difference

the max i ever got on a page, no matter the complexity, excluding medias is 50KB, my pages averages 30KB most times.
while depending on some factors, medias ends up claiming much more.

so i place more emphasis on optimizing my images. -thats me

You can not separate them out. When a person goes to your site, they don't get separate items. They get it all. Having said that, if you can keep your HTML to below 60KB, with embedded tables, that's good. Again, that doesn't make it right though (if you are using it for layout).

There are many SEO articles out there, i dont read them, why? they make SEO complex and hoping when you are totally confused,
you will subscribe to their "lets submit your website to 1 million search engines", i only go to Google Webmaster Central.

I think this is risky. Just use webmaster central like you said and you are good to go. Again, don't blindly follow something or somebody (including webmaster central) just because they claim to be an authority. Do your own research and make an informed decision. This applies not just to coding but life in general.

A web programmer can be a designer, but a designer does not nessecarily have to be a programmer.

I think there is something wrong with this statement so I don't even know how to best respond to it. Something about the "can be" in the first half and the "does not" in the 2nd rubs me the wrong way. Both jobs are interchangeable. It all depends on interest and skill set, IMHO. Both parties, again IMHO, should work together anyways.

he end product of a designer's job might be called a website while that of a programmer might be called web application

I don't think this is right. Again, both should be capable of doing both though the work of one might be "better" than the work of the other. Again, both disciplines should work together to take advantage of economies of scale.

k . . How mych am i charging my client that i would go and look for someone to do the design then i do the programming, that means we whoukd have to share the money right? Hell No !!!

Therein lies the problem with some of us. We want to chop alone. What is wrong with having someone do the graphics for you if you aren't good at it for say, 20K and you in turn, transfer this cost to the client? Does the client have to know? Oh well, I guess if you are charging 50K per project it makes sense that you want to chop alone. If on the other hand, you are charging 100K, paying a good graphics designer 20K doesn't sound like a lot to me (I speak from experience cos I outsource my designs )

dhtml,

At that rate, you might as well do it for free

For starters, you could remove the entire "other news" and right column on xclusiv.

Making sites dynamic won't remove the need for making your sites less busy. Crawl b4 you walk. Get your websites up to speed before creating web apps.

webdezzi, as always, you never fail to amaze me and I mean that with all the love in my heart for you

- I didn't say I am a CSS guru.

- Speaking for myself, I never have said tables is outdated. I have said in so many words though that using tables for layout is outdated

- IMHO, comparing ASP to say, PHP and comparing CSS layout to table layout aren't the same thing.

-

what people want is a website that load fast, displays well, scripted to do the required tasks.
nobody cares if you achieved that with tables or windows, nobody.
they dont even want to know u used dreamweaver or notepad, or php or asp

Just because they don't doesn't mean you should do them a disservice by not giving them a website that is as efficient as possible. That's like saying just because most car owners don't pop open their hood that you should use fanta instead of engine oil, as long as the car runs normally. I don't think, IMHO, that this is how a mature coder should think. Never think in shortcuts.

How can you develop a site that loads fast or a site you aren't even sure will display well if you aren't even coding to latest web standards and are embedding tables that adds to your page weight, among others. Speaking of that:

-

I have asked you to tell me what am losing by using tables and not css, you have said nothing in this regard

Apparently, you haven't faithfully read the entire thread from #1 to the last. But for the record:

1) You add unnecessary page weight to your pages. This increases download times. Might not make a difference to you if you have a T1 connection but how many of us have that?

2) If ever you develop a site to be used by those who use screen readers, this is how it goes (I know cos I have sat in such a session and that is how I appreciated CSS), "table, row, cell, table, row, cell, table, row, cell, hello webdezzi, end cell, end row, etc etc). On the other hand, this is how it sounds using CSS, "left-column, navigation, right column, hello web dezzi)". The difference is clear.

3) Semantically, it just doesn't make sense. Tables are for, as the name implies, tabular data, not layout. Never mind that many have been using it for years. It was cos at the time, we had nothing better and some "guru (i hate this name. Makes me feel like a Buddhist), bless his/her heart, discovered that he could precisely position his elements on a page using tables and of course, we all followed blindly.

4) Have you tried checking any of your embedded-table sites on mobile devices? Such basically crash my device. When they do show up, they come up in chunks.

I have more, but don't want to bore everyone.

Please note: We are beating a dead horse here. sure there will always be 2 sides to a coin. Having said that, when debating issues, let's do so not based on emotions or "who send?" but on facts. Fact is, we should all be up on the latest technologies. People came up with them for a reason and most importantly, people have agreed that these standards work for a reason.

cnario,

They aren't backwards just, generally speaking, people who want to do less work for maximum pay.  At the end of the day, the average client probably doesn't view source or even tell them what they want.  They want a website and don't care how it gets done, not to mention load testing, etc.  The average developer in Nigeria (and I say with from chatting with quite a few and from reading posts on this board) just wants to upload their site, "clean mouth" and move on to the next thing.

Which is easier? Typing out (or having DW do it for you) a series of embedded tables and knocking out a website in a few hours or learning the box model and why it can be so frustrating for developers?  Using a tried-and-true tables or "wasting" time figuring out "this yeye CSS sef"?

The lazy me would go for the latter in both cases.  However as you have rightly said, the world has moved on in this regard, since 1999 and it is best to stay with the flow and stay up-to-date.

It also does amaze me how some nairalanders make assumptions and claim to be mind readers.

Who said anything about being annoyed? Hmm

Remember when you ASSSUME, you make an ASS out of U and ME

I am not in Nigeria but I keep hearing of some card from zenith bank. What is that name again? WebSurfer? Could someone elaborate on this?

Thanks,

Yep, with web standards in the back of your head as you code and come up with a solid site architecture, you don't technically need to use wml. Code with web standards in mind and it is a 99% certainty that your sites will show up consistently across a myriad of devices. I speak from experience

If javascript on a regular website won't run on a mobile device why would you expect it to work with WAP?

I could be wrong but I think the whole purpose of running a mobile site is for it to be as simple as possible. If you have FF and the web developer toolkit, you can actually see what your site (mobile or not, doesn't matter) will look like on a mobile device. This is definitely helpful if you don't have access to a mobile device yet want to see what your site would look like.

Let's do some socratic deductions from the good old days of my uni philosophy and logic class, if you may:

Seun owns Nairaland, Nairaland runs on PHP, Seun owns Nairalist, Therefore Nairalist runs on,

jacob05,

In the spirit of "masho-ree-tee", I will refrain from responding to your rants.

ikeobidi,

tables are bad for layout. Period! Tables are for, as the name implies, tabular data. Have you ever tried making a change to a 7-layer deep table, with no indentations? I have and I can tell you it isn't fun, not to mention all the unnecessary code and weight it adds to a page.

The first 2 are too "busy" - too many links competing for space. Reminds me of why I don't visit www.nigeriaworld.com anymore

The models one. I was expecting to click each photo and get a bio of each model. I guess either you aren't done with that site or you didn't have that in mind.

nitation,

I'd rather be and remain a mystery, a ghost of sorts. The less you see of me, the more you want to know about me

paule,

so r u saying that the Nigerian 12 yr old who owns his own blog and the 9 year old (or whatever age he is) who passed SCJP exam aren't good enough for you?

he he and I do have something to say:

I will let this post slide for a while as it does have some coding to it. Otherwise, I would have moved it without saying a word, to the dating section

The more you code with CSS/Web Standards, the more aware you become of cross-browser issues. It's just, as omnipotens says, like learning any other language.

So come on folks, stop being lazy. Go with the flow!

@poster,

To make this post even more interesting, please add a "remember me" feature to your login script

To the deviators:

Why not answer the question as asked b4 recommending other technologies and/or going on a yabbing fest?

postmaster,

Everytime you post a site, you always say, "www.b.com" or "www.b.com/index". Of course, every time, one of the sites (always the first time), doesn't work. Why not take the time to check which one doesn't work and leave that one out? Is that too much to ask?

nitation, you call me bro? , he he.

All,

Here is a reason why comments, as old-school as it may sound to some, still makes sense:

I am working on a web app to launch soon. I wrote the membership module about 2 weeks ago but while asking someone to do some testing, they uncovered an issue. I had to go back (something I hate to do ) to fix it. Call me slow but despite the good var names I had, indentation, abstraction, etc I couldn't for the life of me figure out why I wrote the code the way I did. I had to start from scratch and in the process, add comments. 2 days ago, I had to make a slight modification so that the module would work on a few new pages I created and guess what? cos of the comments, making the necessary code changes was a breeze.

Again, call me slow, but comments do, and should, have its place as a principle of good coding.

Hmmm,

1) The green color is overwhelming, especially where the satellite dish is

2) "Impossible is Nothing" - isn't this the Adidas motto? You have the lawyer power to fight them if and when they find out?

3) Those boxes at the bottom - I am curious to see how you will implement them. will they be moving as you hover over them? Just curious. As they are right now, they look very chunky. Same question for the top nav.

I say slice up a few pages then get back to us.

Good luck!

and letz not forget the possible possibility of NEPA (sorry, PHCN) taking light just when you are about to hit the "trade" button

Nitation,

I think that rather than give a break, security should be included. At the end of the day, all we have discussed here go hand in hand, IMHO.

postmaster-general 

I will be very blunt - if I were hiring, based on what I see here, I wouldn't call you.  Why? Not because you aren't smart cos based on what I see, you are but cos of how you have presented your information (in essence, yourself).  Though I am not a psychologist, my years of experience lead me to deduce that based on how you posted this information, that so will you be at work, not taking time to do your job well (not following best coding practices, using 2 lines of code to do what would be better served in 5 lines, for readability, rushing to submit your jobs, not taking the time to verify your work (http://www.nacossmouau.com/ doesn't work), etc).

Don't take it the wrong way.  I am only trying to help.  I would rather you post text on a website and/or provide a link to a PDF/whatever document either here or again, on a website.

Good luck!

You might find this thread helpful:
https://www.nairaland.com/nigeria/topic-213936.0.html

Remember, always use the "search" functionality of this site. Many topics have been dealt with in the past and there is no point re-hashing the same issues.

Though I don't do flash myself, from my readings, you don't always have to use the latest flash. If I am correct, flash allows you to save to an earlier version. I believe the rule of thumb is to save one version lower than the latest unless of course you are taking advantage of the latest features. Either way, you should always include a flash sniffer with your movies, just in case.

Flash developers, would I be correct with this assertion?