giant vent ... MORON WEB DESIGNERS

[mcovey]

my parents are having some people do their webpage, and I had a vew gripes with the page they provided, so I emailed them:

Hi, the web page looks fine, but I checked it to
make sure it was valid (it will display properly in
every web browser), and it is not. You can check it
for validity at validator.w3.org. As you can see,
stylesheets are poorly implemented, nor is the alt
attribute used on any images. The pages use tables
instead of the more up-to-date and dynamic div tag,
and you attempted to write it in HTML 4.01, a 5 year
old version, rather than the newest XHTML 1.1. It
would take less than two hours to correct these
problems and ensure the pages would render properly in
100% of web browsers. We think the design is great,
but these problems under the hood should be fixed
prior to the page's launch. Give us a call if these
problems seem insurmountable. Thank you.

They emailed back, 2 weeks later. I have included my responses in red. Tell me what you think.

Originally Posted by me being really mad at this moron

Seldom do I work with clients that are so in tune with
online resources in general, let alone the different
validators and code-checking systems that are
available on the web. I appreciate the interest and
encourage my clients and especially a younger
generation to get involved with learning about
everything out there, however I caution that there can
be too many “resources” available. I bring this up
only because as a professional in the industry for
several years there are certain things that I have
come to recognize as dangerous to the individual
rather than helpful, this “tool” being one of them.
It is undisputed that The World Wide Web Consortium’s
(WC3 as it is commonly known) website can provide
excellent information for users and programmers alike.
However, not all of the information is as useful as
many people believe.

I have a problem believing this, as the W3C is
responsible for defining HTML and introducing new
versions. Their information is considered the
standard.

It has been my experience that their validator, for
example, is not commonly used among designers or
professionals in the web development field for several
reasons. With the all of the different development
programs out there it is almost impossible for any
validator to truly be accurate, spanning all of the
differing programming languages.

WYSIWYG editors are commonly known to provide invalid
code, hence the reason that hand-coding pages is
reccommended.

In addition, with every “new and updated” encoding
language that gets released, the validator would have
to imply that unless you update to the latest and
greatest, your site will most likely get left behind
in the vast technology that exists.

not true, the validator will validate all versions
from HTML 1.0 to XHTML 1.1.

This is untrue. Most of the technology that is
released today is designed to envelop commonly used
languages from the past few years and cater to their
code. In reality designers and developers simply test
their products “the old fashioned way,” by actually
viewing them on screen with different browsers,
operating systems, and screen resolutions to ensure
that the site visitor will be able to view and the
information accurately and have it load swiftly. This
has been time-tested and proved to be the most
accurate method rather than checking code.

Again, I disagree, the most accurate way to check your
code for validity is using the official validator,
from the group that maintains the actual language. A valid page will naturally display correctly accross browsers. Just because a page LOOKS nice, doesn't mean it's code is good, nor does it make it accessible.

Most developers use programs that generate accurate,
up-to date pages, only checking the code when advanced
programming is directly involved. The program I use to
develop all of my sites is one of the industry’s
standards and one of the more highly regarded
Macromedia programs.

Using an expensive program (I assume dreamweaver?) is
no reason to think that your code is somehow better. I
write mine in various plain text editors, including
notepad, gnu/nano, and kate.

I am using the most recent version of the software
and can assure you that you that the code it produces
is current, accurate and compatible with browsers and
cross-platform usage. It does have the capabilities
of creating XML, DHTML, ASP, JSP and other common
client and server side code pages; however it is
unnecessary to implement and generate such a format
with a basic site such as your own. I understand that
by using the validator you now have questions
regarding the accuracy of the code. With this in mind
I invite you to check the validity of commonly used,
high traffic sites I’ve listed below.

I'm sure you are aware that each of those sites uses
different "hacks" to ensure that each browser renders
the page properly. In fact, each major browser
receives a different page, not the same one. I'm sure
this won't be happening with our website.

You will find, as I did, that they too prompt the
tool to question their code and correct what the tool
considers “errors”, when in fact they are not. The
validator is just not equipped to accept what it is
not programmed to, not making the site code incorrect,
but rather making the validator tool rigid and dare I
say even invalid.

Actually, the tool is very, very accurate. These pages are not so concerned with the validity of their code, because they can easily write different versions for every browser. For instance, if the validator finds a block level element inside an inline one, and returns an error, like it or not, YOU are wrong. If it says you didn't include the ALT attribute, no longer a reccomendation, but a necessity for no matter the reason the image can not display, YOU ARE WRONG.

As for the intentional absence of the alt tags, I will
tell you that I rarely ever include them.

That is terrible practice. They are there for a reason. Many dial-up users disable images because of speed. Like it or not, many people use text-browsers which default to the alt text. Like it or not, you need it.

The alt tags
are meant to only be displayed if the images do not
load correctly or if you happen to place your mouse
curser over an image to reveal hidden text or the name
of the photo. I feel it is more important to have the
images load correctly than worry about if they did not
load at all. With today’s browsers being very
“forgiving” (the affectionate term that many industry
people use for displaying information even if there
are inconsistencies in the code or the browser
detection automatically fixes an issue before
displaying the page on screen), it is uncommon that
images load incorrectly if the page was developed
properly and transferred to the web correctly, outside
of an occasional server issue or client side
preference setting. However, if you would like the Alt
tags to be completed for some of the images, I can
certainly go back into the pages and name them
accordingly.

And I'm sure you will do so, if you want to be paid for this project.

If you still have concerns about the site due to the
WC3 Validator please call me so we may discuss them
further. I have been developing in these programs for
a long time and have never come across an issue with
any of my sites that the validator may consider a
hindrance. Let me assure you, your site - when
launched - will be designed and optimized to handle
the needs of the browsers and the different operating
systems as well as being viewed in the common screen
resolutions. I realize I've given you a LOT of
technical information here, so if you need me to
clarify anything please feel free to give me a call.



Please feel free to check these sites with the WC3
Validator:
www.Boston.com

http://www.walmart.com/

http://www.yahoo.com/

www.holiday-inn.com/

http://www.microsoft.com/

I have addressed your fallacy in providing these examples above.

And you forgot to address my concern about use of tables, rather than the DIV tag. Do you test your pages with a screen reader? Braile browser? While they are a minority, blind and deaf web users do exist, and may want to find out about our business, and it is not our job to force them to look elsewhere. I suggest you read up on something called "accessibility", it's a nice thing to design with in mind.

I design with simplicity and accessibility in mind. If your browser doesnt work with stylesheets, my page works. If it doesnt load images, my page works. I tested the page they made in opera, with bugs mode off, images set not to load, and CSS turned off. You know what it looks like? Pure crap. Because this designer couldnt take the 90 minutes or so to fix the problems with the webpage he made. Because he's lazy and can't code, just use Dreamweaver in designer mode.

[Omyn]

I would have him fired and get a new one.

He was extremely defensive, do no wrong,
for the simple fact he has stated that he
is hardly ever wrong you should fire him
just for that.

[serrebi101]

"And you forgot to address my concern about use of tables, rather than the DIV tag. Do you test your pages with a screen reader? Braile browser? While they
are a minority, blind and deaf web users do exist, and may want to find out about our business, and it is not our job to force them to look elsewhere.
I suggest you read up on something called "accessibility", it's a nice thing to design with in mind."
It is, but you really have to watch out. Being blind myself, if a site is not accessible to me, I get frustrated. But there's a problem with these standards groups. They think that accessibility is standard accross different people. Let me tell you it's not. This is a really really bad example , but look at suprnova.org, that site is a nightmare for a new, or person just begining to use a screen reader. Because of the fact that the section indicators arn't links anymore, there graphics. I'm ok with it, because lots of the trance I'm looking for has va at the begining of the title, so I can just use my w screen readers links list option and skip around,
But some people would consider that site unaccessible because they can't quickly navigate the site, so you gotta be carfull what you consider accessible , or not, that's why to really, and I mean really have an accessible site, you have to use one of the two big screen readers jaws
http://www.hj.com
or
http://www.gwmicro.com

[mcovey]

Originally Posted by serrebi101

"And you forgot to address my concern about use of tables, rather than the DIV tag. Do you test your pages with a screen reader? Braile browser? While they
are a minority, blind and deaf web users do exist, and may want to find out about our business, and it is not our job to force them to look elsewhere.
I suggest you read up on something called "accessibility", it's a nice thing to design with in mind."
It is, but you really have to watch out. Being blind myself, if a site is not accessible to me, I get frustrated. But there's a problem with these standards groups. They think that accessibility is standard accross different people. Let me tell you it's not. This is a really really bad example , but look at suprnova.org, that site is a nightmare for a new, or person just begining to use a screen reader. Because of the fact that the section indicators arn't links anymore, there graphics. I'm ok with it, because lots of the trance I'm looking for has va at the begining of the title, so I can just use my w screen readers links list option and skip around,
But some people would consider that site unaccessible because they can't quickly navigate the site, so you gotta be carfull what you consider accessible , or not, that's why to really, and I mean really have an accessible site, you have to use one of the two big screen readers jaws
http://www.hj.com
or
http://www.gwmicro.com

If you look at my site, it's not very readable if you're blind, but I designed it with fonts as EMs, so that they are easily resized, and if you like, the colors look OK inverted. I test my page in opera, which lets me turn off CSS, invert colors, change font sizes, etc. One really bad practice that this guy did, is use Points for the fonts, rather than relative units.


EDIT: rather than add a post I'll ad this here...

Actually, he just bought a dreamweaver template for the site and made it in designer mode. Maybe he thinks that since he paid $500 for a wysiwyg editor, his code must be perfect. I've written better code on scrap paper (really, and I'm not that good.)

[CCSDUDE]

Fire him....he's a fucking moron... tell him you've got a word of advice... "Stick to dooping AOL users"

[serrebi101]

I looked at your site, looks fine to me, it looks really basic, at least from a screen reader point of view.
sorry if I pissed you off lol.

[lizardsforall]

...only because as a professional in the industry for several years...

yeah I've been coding html 4.0 since it started, (no personal defenses for the old standard), and every time i see a guy working with dreamweaver or frontpage and think they're the badest thing since sliced bread, it makes me cringe. when i get a call saying someone needs help with their page and open the source and they have no clue what i'm doing. I love showing them up, though I know there is some 12 year old kid sitting at home coding better than me.

[mcovey]

Originally Posted by serrebi101

I looked at your site, looks fine to me, it looks really basic, at least from a screen reader point of view.
sorry if I pissed you off lol.

I'm trying to make it small. It's mostly my blog and forum, but the only people registered there are me and my brother.

I like a minimalist design with no tricks so people know what to expect. Like changing the status bar in javascript... I used to think that was so cool but seeing how it screws up opera and firefox, I hate it. So I leave the page basic and add what I need.

Bells and whistles irritate me.


Oh and these people aren't doing a site for me, they're doing a site for my parent's business. They haven't put it on the web yet, otherwise I'd post a link. Their website is http://kessnorth.com/

[mountain_rage]

Should I contact your parents and tell them to fire their web designer

[Monty Burnz]

Wait......you designed and operate your own website. You know more about web designing then the hired guy.

Why didn't your parents have you do their site? Fire the loon.

[method]

w3c pisses me off.

But because some of our clients are subjected to severe auditing we have to comply to their standards so we can put their XHTML-validated images on the sites.

My gripes...

Should I have to put ALT into a 'blank.gif' image that is only used for spacing??? - Of course not... but w3c is sooooo anal about it that we have to do ALT="" which is 6 bytes of wasted bandwidth per 'blank.gif' image.

Why can't people continue to use the 'height' and 'background' properties of some tags still when 99.8% of the world are using browsers that support these properties?

I also find CSS very useful for a lot of things but if a lot of the elements of your page are unique in their formatting you can waste more bandwidth and time conforming to unnecessary standards.

In a RAD (rapid application development) environment this can end up turning a complex JSP/ASP/PHP page (that generates HTML) from a 20-30 min task to well over an hour.

Another gripe I have with w3c is that if you are coding a content management system and your users are used to developing content in MS-Word (yeah I know MS-Word is terrible for HTML generation but that's what a lot of school staff do and it's hard to get them to move over to Dreamweaver or whatever!!) - you end up with some of MS's proprietry tags in there which then further complicate issues... requiring you to code complex clean-up scripts that slow down responsiveness, increase strain on the processor of the server and ultimately make the page slightly more accessible to about 0.02% of potential visitors.

It also means you need to create stylesheets on-the-fly if you want to give your users any real formatting control of the content within their browser. (We use the typical IFRAME method)

If anything, w3c should split the validation or give pages a percentage rating for their 'cleanness' and then show errors on a following page.

I do like the w3c site because it does help teach clean coding practive.. but insistance that pages need to meet the standards EXACTLY and especially when these are on trivial issues which result in no noticeable effects on ANY browsers is a pain.

w3c... good for teaching coders to keep code clean... but they do insist on some unnecessary crap sometimes.

Of course.. you can always validate your page, find out what the IP-range for the validator is and make sure that when it connects.. it get's shown a static clean page that isn't the real one!!! It's naughty... but it works. :;)

btw.. don't think I've missed the point about blind or partially sighted people as I have to design with them in mind too (schools, govt., etc. need compliance with accessibility standards for their audits too - so we have to create pages accordingly)

[mcovey]

Originally Posted by Monty Burnz

Wait......you designed and operate your own website. You know more about web designing then the hired guy.

Why didn't your parents have you do their site? Fire the loon.

because they wanted a "professional" to do it. I could start my own "professional web design" business right now and scam people too.

[nasrules]

Originally Posted by method

Should I have to put ALT into a 'blank.gif' image that is only used for spacing??? - Of course not... but w3c is sooooo anal about it that we have to do ALT="" which is 6 bytes of wasted bandwidth per 'blank.gif' image.

Just a quick note to say that you obviously haven't noticed that spacer images are well out of date as a design technique. Using CSS margins or padding, you could acheive the same effect in a much cleaner way.

The W3C's ideal is to seperate content from presentation as much as possible. That's why they want you to use DIVs and CSS. Having used tables for years in my amateur site attempts, when I discovered the newer DIV techniques I was at first unwilling to adopt the techniques, but have reaped the rewards since.

[mcovey]

Originally Posted by nasrules

Just a quick note to say that you obviously haven't noticed that spacer images are well out of date as a design technique. Using CSS margins or padding, you could acheive the same effect in a much cleaner way.

The W3C's ideal is to seperate content from presentation as much as possible. That's why they want you to use DIVs and CSS. Having used tables for years in my amateur site attempts, when I discovered the newer DIV techniques I was at first unwilling to adopt the techniques, but have reaped the rewards since.

Exactly. Old hacks are worse for cross-browser design than simply using CSS. If the browser doesn't use CSS, the page will still flow logically, in the same fashion as the source. I've gone from Geocities pagebuilder, to HTML 4 and I even used the font tag, then I finally learned CSS/XHTML and I love it. Besides being simpler it just plain looks better.

[Afn]

Content is king. if you have useful content people will visit your site. The few people who do not use standard browsers that are obsolete are a small minority. Unless your a government, a large corporation or other organization and mandated by law to provide universal access, you do not need to bother with standards to the perfection of the w3c.

With technology advancing so fast, it is hard to keep up with all of the standard changes. If you do not like your provider, switch providers. If you have enough money, you can hire programmers and coders to create what ever you want.

Most of us are not that lucky, or the content is not that important.

In a few years, pages written today will look as bad as pages from 1996 look dated today.