Thanks for your comments. I've been having real trouble viewing the parallel display with IE. I don't often use IE, but when I attempt to show it off to 'common'-folk, they usually are. My belief is that if ANY part of the page does not completely validate per XML spec, IE defaults from XHTML to old-school HTML markup and loses much of the CSS and other features. Any ideas on that?
Also, I wanted to let you know that we moved the website into the sword CVS repository, module name 'swordweb', and I set you up with an account. We now can modify in a private area and then commit our changes. There are some nuances with permission, but you should be able to execute the commands (# lines are comments below):
cd /home/sword/html/biblenew/delbourne # or I think you have a symlink in your home, so # cd ~/biblenew/delbourne is the same
# be sure your private work area is up to date cvs update -d
# make your changes and test
# if you've taken a while to get your changes done and ready to # commit, then you should first run update again to be sure anyone # else's changes are merged in with yours and retest your work if # it looks like update updated anything. cvs update -d
#commit your work cvs commit
# cvs will then ask you for a comment about what you changed. # YOU'RE IN VI!!! A few basic VI commands: # There are 2 basic modes in VI- Command and Edit # You are initially in command mode. To get to edit mode you # can use one of the following: # # i = insert at current location # A = append to the end of the line # o or O = open a new line below or above current line # # ESC = returns to command mode # Command mode keys: # x = deletes 1 character # dd = deletes 1 line # u = undo (multiple undos available) # ZZ or :wq = saves and exits # :q! = quite without saving
# Then go up one directory, to the public biblenew location cd ..
# And update the public site to the latest stuff cvs update -d
Looking forward to your changes! Thanks for keeping us in check!
-Troy.
Don A. Elbourne Jr. wrote:
I probably ought to apologize for my rant this morning. the scream was half in jest, well probably more like 90% in jest. :) I did freak out a little bit when I saw the align tags, width tags, and inline style smattered throughout the page. But after a closer look, there are only a few things that could be cleaned up and moved to the external CSS pretty easily.
The table itself is actually a great idea. For all the things I've said against table based design, tables do have their place. Their place is to display tabular data. The parallel translations are tabular data and thus well suited for a table. We just need to take out any presentational mark-up and replace it with semantic markup.
Another issue with the table is space. With the table being squished into the center column, things get real cramped real quick. I'm not sure what ought to be done about that. Removing the outer columns and just using one big table across the page would be one option, but you lose the cool one click feature that is working there now.
One option might be to have a separate page, or another section on the preferences page, that would allow the person to select the translations they want displayed.
by grace alone,
Don A. Elbourne Jr. http://elbourne.org
----- Original Message ----- From: "Don A. Elbourne Jr." <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Sent: Saturday, June 07, 2003 7:27 AM
Subject: Re: [sword-devel] Please test
AAAAAAAGGGGHHHHHH!!!!! http://www.crosswire.org/sword/biblenew/parallelstudy.jsp
ok ok I'm calm. I just had to get it out of my system.
Let me get another cup of coffee and I'll be right back.
OK. A good bit of presentational markup has crept in there. One of the
goals
of the design was to separate content and structure from presentation.
Allow
me to cross-post something I sent out yesterday to a church-webmaster list
I
am on.
----------------------------------------------
We have been talking about the advantages of valid XHTML and CSS. One of
the
real advantages is that you can separate your content from presentation.
In
other words your HTML file will have just your content with tags that
define
the content instead of bloating the page with presentational information. See my previous message to Paul, where I showed how to replace a big block of presentational markup with a simple <h2> tag. Instead of defining the size, color, justification, and margin of the text, we defined it by what
it
is, a heading. You can use the same thing with divs by using either an id
or
a class, like this <div id="navigation"> or <div class="content">
Once the structure of your page is in place you can style all of the elements with one external style sheet. Lets suppose you have 50 pages on your site. If all your navigation lists are marked with presentational
code
like <font> tags then to make a change you will have to go to each of
those
50 pages and make your changes. But if you code them with
non-presentational
markup like <div id="navigation"> you can then make changes to your one
CSS
file and it will effect every page of your site at one go. Cool huh?
This is what I tried to do with my church web site. Here is what it looks like without the CSS: http://lakeshorebaptist.net/nocss.shtml And here is what it looks like with the CSS: http://lakeshorebaptist.net/
I know my site is sort of plain-Jane looking, but if I wanted to change
the
complete look of the site, all I would have to do is change the CSS, not every page of the site.
My site is not the best example. If you want to see something really cool, check out the CSS Zen Garden. The page is marked up in pure non-presentational XHTML. The challenge went out to designers to
transform
the page with nothing but the magic of CSS. I could not find an unstyled version of the page on the site so I mirrored it here: http://elbourne.org/temp/zengarden.htm Now check out the styled version: http://www.csszengarden.com/ Follow the links in the navigation to view other designs. I think my favorites so far are Michael Pick's "Dead or Alive" and Golden Mean by Douglas Bowman. The amazing thing is that all
of
these pages are the same exact page. No changes were made to the HTML itself. the only difference is that different style sheets are being imported. Remarkable.
I know that is just one page, but let's suppose it was a site with
thousands
of pages. Can you imagine trying to make drastic changes like that to the entire site, page by page? Big names like ESPN.com are starting to see how much time can be saved with this method and they recently switched over to semantic XHTML. Probably none of us have church web sites with thousands
of
pages, but the same principles work well no matter what the content. -----------------------------------------------
I use the CSS Zen Garden as an example of the remarkable stuff that can be done using CSS when it is applied to pure semantic XHTML. When I started designing the Sword web interface, I intended for the CSS to be a working demo of one possible design. If we keep the XHTML pure and without presentational markup we can then come back and do whatever with the CSS
and
not have to re-code the source. Perhaps we could even get a real designer
to
come in and provide an outstanding CSS, in opposition to my feeble
attempts.
Or we could provide more than one CSS and the user could choose their preference. These things are only possible if we stick to
non-presentational
well-formed valid XHTML in the page itself.
Tristan Nitot can say it better than I can. Check out the great article " The Business Benefits of Web Standards." http://devedge.netscape.com/viewsource/2003/why-web-standards/
Alright enough of that. </rant>
by grace alone,
Don A. Elbourne Jr. http://elbourne.org
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