Something You Should Note in the Newer Browsers

JavaScript and client side scripting.

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omniuni
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Re: Something You Should Note in the Newer Browsers

Post by omniuni »

ghurtado:

THANK YOU!

Well put!

:yar:
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Re: Something You Should Note in the Newer Browsers

Post by pickle »

Cool it folks - let's all play nice.
Real programmers don't comment their code. If it was hard to write, it should be hard to understand.
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ghurtado
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Re: Something You Should Note in the Newer Browsers

Post by ghurtado »

I'm sorry if I offended anyone, it's just that the scrollbars argument should have been laid to rest 10 years ago and I get really touchy every time it comes up (which is surprisingly often).
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omniuni
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Re: Something You Should Note in the Newer Browsers

Post by omniuni »

Ditto.

I deal so much with problems involving standards, it is easy to get worked up.
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Eran
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Re: Something You Should Note in the Newer Browsers

Post by Eran »

A little off-topic, but here's a good reference for styling button inputs - http://particletree.com/features/redisc ... n-element/
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ghurtado
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Re: Something You Should Note in the Newer Browsers

Post by ghurtado »

Actually, very much on topic, since I believe the OP was about the default style of form elements in different browsers. Good link too, thank you.
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Sindarin
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Re: Something You Should Note in the Newer Browsers

Post by Sindarin »

And I am okay with not styling the browser's scrollbar,
Did anyone actually read this?
Fsck the control you think you have over how my browser looks!

By the way, I am a designer too, just one with more common sense than ego.
Learn to speak like a normal person and state your opinion with arguments.
Also, in Firefox for me, the scrollbars are thin, light gray, and marble-textured, themed currently with KDE4's excellent Oxygen Widget Style which lights them up aqua on mouse-over. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:KDE_4.0RC2.png)
Eww. Sorry, it just doesn't look nice. It looks like the pattern doesn't repeat correctly.
Imagine having that style in your page,

Client: Why are those scrollbars gray!? I thought we said the layout to be all green.
Designer: Long time ago, there was a team of people who setup w3c...

I'm sorry if I offended anyone, it's just that the scrollbars argument should have been laid to rest 10 years ago and I get really touchy every time it comes up (which is surprisingly often).
I am not offended, I just can't understand why people are supporting w3c's flawed decisions.
Let the browser scrollbar alone. Why can't I style my divs' scrollbars to match my layout? Why Javascript and Flash gives me the ability and CSS doesn't? I own the whole page but not the scrollbars? :| Guys, it's a problem. It's something the w3c possibly overlooked. And if they still stand on their claim that it's for user accessibility, then try to find my black styled buttons,checkboxes,text,textarea etc. in my black layout. :P
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ghurtado
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Re: Something You Should Note in the Newer Browsers

Post by ghurtado »

Trust me on this, the W3C did not overlook this issue - they probably discussed it much more than we ever will on this thread. They had enough common sense to draw a line in the sand which separates the content a website provides from the software that I run in my own computer and over which I (the user) should have full control. This line is extremely important for much of the way the web works, and its ramifications stretch far beyond the realm of design and colored scrollbars, but much further into security and other issues.

Now the W3C can only really make recommendations, since they don't really make the browsers themselves, they are just a standards body. So the browser makers are free to follow the standards (W3C) or implement their own crazy extensions to it, or even go against the recommendations altogether. Most browser makers with common sense and a good understanding of the web (that is to say, everyone except for IE) try to stay within those boundaries because they understand the advantages of standards in web development.

The fact is that certain designers with a thick understanding of the web see the W3C as no more than an annoyance preventing them from controlling something they ultimately have absolutely no control over. All of this designer angst stems from their (yours too?) false illusion of control.

You do not control the scrollbars on my browser. You do not even control the way your webpage displays on my browser, when it really comes down to it. All you control is the writing of a stylesheet file that my browser downloads along with your page and does whatever it wants with it. My browser will ignore whatever parts of your stylesheet that do not make sense to it (like scrollbar styling, and hopefully it laughs a little while doing so :) ) and will override and change whatever parts I don't feel like putting up with (like ridiculous background textures or color schemes). You could write a stylesheet that tries to change my desktop background to match your site scheme if you would like: it will get processed by the same part of my browser that processes colored scrollbars, the part that ignores it.

W3C or not, this overall process is never going to change, because it is almost the very definition of how the web works. Next time you write a stylesheet, I would recommend you think of yourself as writing a document of recommendations, not commands. These will be almost always misinterpreted by some browser, very often overruled, sometimes ignored, and seldom followed to the T.

If you think this is bad, try to imagine a world without standards, where browser makers are free to implement whatever crazy HTML tags and CSS rules they see fit, and tell me if you would like to live in that world. Actually, you dont even have to imagine it, just go back to 1998. If you were designing websites back then, you will remember how much fun it was to deal with the state of things. Thanks in large part to the W3C and to web designers who understand the paradigm of the web, we are in a much better place 10 years later. What they did to accomplish this was draw that line in the sand which left things like the blink tag, the marquee tag and colored scrollbars outside, and reasonable standards inside.

Believe me, you are not the first designer to walk down this road of disappointment and won't be the last. I hope one day you relinquish that illusion of control and become a truly inspired web designer, the kind that helps move the web forward instead of backwards.
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Sindarin
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Re: Something You Should Note in the Newer Browsers

Post by Sindarin »

Believe me, you are not the first designer to walk down this road of disappointment and won't be the last. I hope one day you relinquish that illusion of control and become a truly inspired web designer, the kind that helps move the web forward instead of backwards.
Thanks, but I am already a high-rated web designer/developer in my country. :D

I found the problem with styling scrollbars a long time ago, I just brought it up here because it was relevant,
A client of mine wanted some way of displaying long text inside some small area of the site. I suggested a div with a scrollbar. He agreed.
I styled the scrollbar to match the layout. It worked in IE, not in Firefox. He asked me the reason. I searched and told him about the w3c rule.
He was so picky about this that the project was in stake. I did a research on javascript about this matter. Styled it with javascript finally and saved my work.
You see that if you live in a country that there are picky people and there's no customer education, then those little details are what are making the difference.
Problem might be that I care to give the client exactly what he paid for.

I don't mess with scrollbars nowadays, I mostly use pagination algorithms for long texts, works better and it's more user and developer friendly.
You do not control the scrollbars on my browser. You do not even control the way your webpage displays on my browser, when it really comes down to it.

The fact is that certain designers with a thick understanding of the web see the W3C as no more than an annoyance preventing them from controlling something they ultimately have absolutely no control over. All of this designer angst stems from their (yours too?) false illusion of control.
That is not correct, I decide how the page will be displayed, what to display. If I don't publish the content, the user won't have anything to see. The browser shows that and helps the user (with config) to change the layout to his preferences to aid him in navigation, but it doesn't help fix a badly designed page.

With Flash content I can't display something exactly as I want it to be. It is up to the user if he wants to install Flash Player and view this content or not.
With Javascript I can make my own eye candy effects and accessibility features (auto-complete etc.), same applies here.
With CSS I can style the page however I want it to show up. CSS overrides user settings most of the time though except for colors.
If the user chooses to not display certain items, I respect his decision, but he won't be able to view my site or he will view a lo-fi/alt version of it.

However to browse the web and have the best experience of Web 2.0, you do need Javascript, Flash, CSS2 enabled.

I like the standards of w3c, because they're helping web designers a lot. I just have my share of dislikes on their decisions.
draw that line in the sand which left things like the blink tag, the marquee tag and colored scrollbars outside, and reasonable standards inside.
Like the <b> <i> tags in the future... :?
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