From spc@conman.org Wed Dec  4 11:29:29 2002
From: spc@conman.org
To: test-drb@ccmp.vtda.org
Subject: Web Site Question (was: OT: _spam_)
Date: Wed, 04 Dec 2002 11:29:29 +0000
Message-ID: <200212041729.MAA06696@conman.org>
In-Reply-To: <005501c29bac$2a59bec0$8a0101ac@ibm23xhr06>
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It was thus said that the Great John Allain once stated:
> 
> It Is possible to code HTML for a kind of 'infinite backwards
> compatibility', that is, each new function that an old browser
> doesn't support just vanishes, but the text remains...  So, if
> you are clever and have too much time on your hands, you
> can make a "modern" site that retains this text content while
> the bells and whistles fall off.  This isn't a <noframes> thing
> since that actually makes you code the page twice.  It's more
> like making an image that looks as good in B&W as it does
> in color, with the same pixels.

  Use minimal HTML and use CSS to do the fancy layouts, colors and fonts. 
My online journal/blog [1] uses straightforward HTML (no tables!) and for
browsers that support CSS, you get a nice left hand column of links, plus a
wider right hand column of content.  With a browser that doesn't support CSS
(and I've hidden the CSS from Netscape 4x as its support of CSS is laughably
buggy) you get all the content first, then at the bottom of the page all the
links that are in (obstensibly) the left hand column.

  There are ways of specifying alternative images (as I seem to recall) but
I suspect the method only works on newer browsers like Mozilla 1x, Opera 7
or IE 6x (if at all).

> If any of this is too much work: do the basic.

  Use HTML as a structured language, forget about using <TABLE> (unless for
actual tabular data) and <FONT> tags and you can use style sheets after the
fact to spruce up the page.

  -spc (There are some amazing things you can do with CSS ... )

[1]	http://boston.conman.org/

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