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From: dorayme on 25 Jul 2010 20:30
In article <m28w4znncf.fsf(a)sherm.shermpendley.com>,
Sherm Pendley <sherm.pendley(a)gmail.com> wrote:

> dorayme <dorayme(a)optusnet.com.au> writes:
>
....
> > It sure raises the bar if one has to make pages so they are
> > *very* assessible on tiny screen mobile phones without any
> > special CSS targetting.
>
> Quite the opposite, IMHO - cell phone makers are drastically lowering
> the bar, by improving their browsers. The days of needing a "lite" or
> "mobile" version of a site are gone. Modern smartphones have full-
> blown browsers that are capable of handling sites that follow industry
> standard best practices of the sort that Andy refers to.
>

Well what is opposite of what? And what counts as improvement?
Perhaps mobile phone browsers should have a few extra tricks (for
example to turn off min-width in clever ways) so that authors are
free to use it knowing it will not be a big liability when it
comes to a mobile phone. I am not urging they not be standards
compliant.

It would surprise me a great deal if authors world wide as a
class did not have to work to a greater level of skill to fit the
ever changing development of browser devices without suffering
from lowest common denominator degradations in aesthetic and
cool. One can be *too beholden* to ideals. I very much like the
idea of a pressure release valve that comes with an ability to
target mobiles and small screens with some special CSS. I doubt
if browsers alone could do this smartly enough, it might take a
human to help along (as it does/did when catering to
IE(especially older).

You say it lowers the bar because they are just like any browser.
I say it can raise the bar for commercial developers who have
more than mere information to present.

> One caveat that comes to mind, though, is menus that unroll when the
> pointer hovers over them. I'm not sure how that would work in a touch-
> based environment with no pointing device. Even in this case, one need
> not develop a mobile-specific site to work around the issue; menus that
> unroll when clicked will work equally well for desktop browsers.
>

Well, there you have another example. This one I am not
sympathetic towards because I rather dislike the whole business
of dropdowns, fly-outs but I recognise that many people support
and like these things. Even used them sparingly myself for a one
level drop on one site! <g>.

There would be many many things like this that might well be
useful to a lot of people but which might be *difficult* to let
degrade well for mobiles unless some special provisions were made
for mobiles.

It is an interesting argument and I am not set in my thinking on
this.

--
dorayme
From: Sherm Pendley on 25 Jul 2010 21:41
dorayme <dorayme(a)optusnet.com.au> writes:

> In article <m28w4znncf.fsf(a)sherm.shermpendley.com>,
> Sherm Pendley <sherm.pendley(a)gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> dorayme <dorayme(a)optusnet.com.au> writes:
>>
> ...
>> > It sure raises the bar if one has to make pages so they are
>> > *very* assessible on tiny screen mobile phones without any
>> > special CSS targetting.
>>
>> Quite the opposite, IMHO - cell phone makers are drastically lowering
>> the bar, by improving their browsers. The days of needing a "lite" or
>> "mobile" version of a site are gone. Modern smartphones have full-
>> blown browsers that are capable of handling sites that follow industry
>> standard best practices of the sort that Andy refers to.
>
> Well what is opposite of what?

Lowering the bar, as opposed to raising it. I remember all too well
(although the therapy is helping) the situation I was faced with around
ten years ago. I was working at a major content provider, with proto-
type versions of set-top and mobile devices. Trying to make the same
page work on a variety of devices was a nightmare back then, and the
bar is FAR lower now.

> And what counts as improvement?

Well-designed zooming, for instance. When first loaded, pages are
commonly displayed at a zoom level that makes the whole page width fit
the screen. Body text can be too small to read at that level, but a
tap on a heading zooms in to make its containing div use the whole
screen width, and a "pinch" gesture zooms back out to view the whole
page.

> One can be *too beholden* to ideals. I very much like the
> idea of a pressure release valve that comes with an ability to
> target mobiles and small screens with some special CSS.

Media selectors are definitely useful, no argument there. My point is
that we no longer need two *completely* separate pages, one in HTML
and one in (for example) WML.

> it might take a
> human to help along (as it does/did when catering to
> IE(especially older).

Yes, certainly - but tweaking HTML markup a bit, and perhaps using a
media-specific style sheet, is still a HUGE improvement over having to
create a separate document in an entirely different markup language.

> You say it lowers the bar because they are just like any browser.
> I say it can raise the bar for commercial developers who have
> more than mere information to present.

I suspect we're making different comparisons. I'm comparing it with
the effort required to support both desktop and mobile devices ten, or
even five years ago. Relative to that, the bar is *far* lower now, as
is demonstrated by the fact that we're now tweaking HTML pages to
degrade well on mobile devices, instead of creating a separate pages
that are mobile-only.

sherm--

--
Sherm Pendley <www.shermpendley.com>
<www.camelbones.org>
Cocoa Developer
From: TheBicyclingGuitarist on 25 Jul 2010 23:12
On Jul 25, 6:41 pm, Sherm Pendley <sherm.pend...(a)gmail.com> wrote:
> dorayme <dora...(a)optusnet.com.au> writes:
> > In article <m28w4znncf....(a)sherm.shermpendley.com>,
> >  Sherm Pendley <sherm.pend...(a)gmail.com> wrote:
>
> >> dorayme <dora...(a)optusnet.com.au> writes:
>
> I suspect we're making different comparisons. I'm comparing it with
> the effort required to support both desktop and mobile devices ten, or
> even five years ago. Relative to that, the bar is *far* lower now, as
> is demonstrated by the fact that we're now tweaking HTML pages to
> degrade well on mobile devices, instead of creating a separate pages
> that are mobile-only.
>
> sherm--
>

Apparently my home page is the one of my whole site that needs the
most tweaking to degrade well on mobile devices, which is unfortunate.
I like the three column layout it has had since 1997. Is there a way
to adjust the styles so that as Andy suggests :

> it's time to let
> things linearize themselves. Let the masthead pop to the top and the
> nav go below it, then the right-hand look after itself somewhere down
> the bottom.

Is a complete redesign needed or is it just a matter of declaring
different styles for the divs? It might be helpful that the home page
has its own separate style sheet already since it has that unique
layout compared to the other pages of the web site. Some people have
told me to make it more consistent with the rest of the site, but I
don't see a problem with it being different (except for this not
degrading well on mobile devices).
From: dorayme on 26 Jul 2010 05:46
In article <m2bp9vrpe4.fsf(a)sherm.shermpendley.com>,
Sherm Pendley <sherm.pendley(a)gmail.com> wrote:

> I suspect we're making different comparisons. I'm comparing it with
> the effort required to support both desktop and mobile devices ten, or
> even five years ago. Relative to that, the bar is *far* lower now, as
> is demonstrated by the fact that we're now tweaking HTML pages to
> degrade well on mobile devices, instead of creating a separate pages
> that are mobile-only.

Fair enough.

--
dorayme
From: Andy Dingley on 26 Jul 2010 06:27
On 25 July, 15:14, TheBicyclingGuitarist
<Ch...(a)TheBicyclingGuitarist.net> wrote:

> Is there a way for me to code the page so that on wider screens it can
> have the three columns, but on smaller screens it would linearize as
> you suggest?

If there's a minimum width at which a menu list item becomes
unworkable, set a minimum width on it. Browsers will do the rest.
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