Peterbe.com

Many websites have drop-downs to assist navigation. Usually this only applies to big sites where sitemaps are necessary and where you want people to get to any part of the site from the home page in one click. Sadly I've never had the challenge to develop any web sites that are that big and diverse in content but there's a time for everything.

Anyway, the Lufthansa site manages to use drop-downs efficiently. This is accomplished with Javascripts, but sadly nothing works if you don't have Javascript disabled. When you roll your mouse over "Worldwide Sites" it shows a drop-down underneath with a looong list of options. It's good because drop-downs are usually very ugly but powerful as navigation tools.

The Gmail user interface has a good way of dealing with file attachments that I would like to incorporate into the IssueTrackerProduct Add Issue page to make it easier and more flexible to use.

Unlike Gmail, the IssueTrackerProduct can't rely on Javascript so this has to work equally well in Lynx, IE or Firefox. The Lynx people will have to do with the existing interface where you get a list of file attachment inputs. The people with Javascript support will get a hyperlink that when clicked shows a file input box.

Without further ado, please have a test

I'm a fan of good web development ideas. At least different ones because they help us understand what works and what doesn't.

Then I found this website called HumanPosture.com which uses a documentation-like navigation to present all information on the website. From the front page there's a link in the bottom right hand corner that lures you into going to the next page. Before you know it you've clicked through on all 10 (or so) pages and finally returned back to the home page. These next links really work I think.

The whole navigation works like an online documentation site like for example this tutorial but the interesting thing is that the HumanPosture.com website isn't a documentation. It's a webpage filled with information like any other webpage. Notice also that there are no other distracting links anywhere. Unvisited links are blue, visited ones are purple and the logo is clearly located where it's supposed to be.

Well done HumanPosture.com! If I only had more time I'd read it too and not just focus on the web design :)

As a web developer you have to balance how flash your site is going to be and how useable it is going to be to disabled people. Blind people are disabled, so when they surf the web, navigational and content hints that are hidden in the colour and layout is completely missed.

More importantly, these blind users often use a different computer setup which is very different. Some people use screen readers (e.g. Jaws) and some people use "basic" web browsers like Lynx or Links. These web browsers usually ignore all the added sugar to web pages and drills down straight to the content.

First of all, let me tell you about CSS Zen Garden. It's a global community effort to showcase the power of design by CSS (Cascading StyleSheet). The HTML (XTML Strict for HTML-non-novice) is the same for everybody but every person who choose to do a design gets to define their own stylsheet. This is a wonderful addition to the whole Web Standards movement where the principle is simple: HTML for content, CSS for layout and design.

Now, this zengarden instance called Geocities 1996 by Bruce Lawson. You can read more about the design on his site. Bruce claims to get his inspiration from this site but I suspect that that site, like Bruce's, is a joke.

Found this site when I was trying to figure out the HTML entity codes for certain characters that had slipped into my XML file.

It cleverly explains how they are used, their unicode number, the HTML entity, how to write in in TeX and a link explaining more about each commonly confused character.

Well done Greg Baker

CSS and web standards is a great tool for producing good web pages. It allows you to separate out content from presentation. The CSS file should be given a lot of responsibility and be very powerful in terms of what it can control.

The problem is that the CSS file can grow very big resulting in slow download times for the web surfer and heavy load on web servers. Usually it grows because you either:

• add more HTML that needs to designed but later the HTML is removed/expired but you don't remove what was added to the CSS file
• add more CSS to cover potential additions of HTML that never happen

I actually feel bad about complaining about this website because it's a vast bank of information about England written by a single person called Philip Davidson. According to his website, he's composed some 3000 pages! I guess all have been done with state of the art Microsoft Frontpage 0.1, MS Paint and Netscape 2.0.

The reason I genuinely dislike looking at this website is that all pages seem to be very different. There's not consistency and you constantly fear that you've left the site without noticing it. A quick glance on the URL before you panic assures you you can remove the cursor from the back button. The front page has five animations inclusive an animated background that can probably cause damage to your eyes. Be careful!

The site also features frames that scroll forever and hides parts of the navigation. On this page there's a picture which is the word "RETURN"; next to it is an explanation what that says you can press it to return to the main page. What's the point then of having the image if you have to explain it? On some pages there's a nav at the bottom with the headline: "Transfer to:". Since when do you transfer between different pages on one site? Some pages surprisingly open new windows with no apparent reason. Be careful!

On the home page: 6 distinctly different flashing/blinking animations and 14! different font displays (different sizes and different colours). It's got annoying background sound (if your browser allows it).

There's really very little good to say about this website. Perhaps the content is good if you have hernia; but if I did, I don't think I'd manage to stay long on this site. I actually think it's so bad that it might be a joke.

Suppose you're sold on the idea of XHTML instead of HTML. Then, the next thing you have to decide is whether to go for XHTML 1.0 Strict or XHTML 1.0 Transitional.

The names speak for themselves. Strict is strict/rigid, Transitional is transitional/forgiving. The benefits of Strict over Transitional are similar to those of XHTML over HTML in principle. The question is, is Transitional not good enough? Do you have to go so far as to use Strict?