Cre8ting Links
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Finding someone who is close to you physically using the Internet is far from easy. If they’re close to you in their ideas then that becomes easier. However if they’re writing in a different language, then again it can be difficult. As it happens, Isabelle Hontebeyrie wrote an interesting item recently, Quand les médias francophones ne respectent pas les standards Web. In other words, the francophone media are not always respecting Web standards. It’s directly related to a posting of mine, Trial By Firefox. It could well be that the root of the problem in both cases is Microsoft’s Internet Explorer and its historical attitude towards standards.
So ideas may be close but do we live in the same neck of the woods, that’s more difficult. You could use Chandu Thota’s BlogMap to check. However there’s no trace of Ms. Hontebeyrie there. Another mapping of bloggers is provided by the Amsterdam based A2B and there you’ll find her. Apparently only 13 miles away from my home base.
Finding kindred spirits with similar thoughts is much easier via the Internet, particularly if you’re talking in the same language. One such kindred spirit has just been honoured on the Cre8asite Forums. Send2Paul has been nominated as the Cre8asite Example of the Year. That’s an honour richly deserved. We share many ideas in common and it’s amazing the way coincidences can happen. It’s a small world as they say. He recently had laser eye surgery and in consequence has set up a Laser Eye Surgery web page to help others. In fact my wife had laser eye surgery just 3 years ago and she still raves about how great it has been for her. My daughter also works for Lasik MD, which is the biggest laser eye surgery group in Canada.
An even stronger coincidence is that he was born in Middlesbrough in the North-East of England. I was born in Hartlepool. The two are only 7 miles apart. It’s a very small world. However I could never have found that out on the Internet.
Tags: Cre8asite, forum, BlogMap, Laser eye surgery, Lasik.
BPWrap
March 28th, 2005 at 11:19 am
Another useful website for Geo-coordinates is [url]http://geourl.org[/url].
March 28th, 2005 at 5:07 pm
Hi Barry!
Thanks for linking my post on francophone media. One small detail… I just picked up an analysis done by Benoit Bisson here: [url=http://blog-cafe.com/index.php/2005/03/22/93-medias-francophones-design-web-ouch]http://blog-cafe.com/index.php/2005/03/22/93-medias-francophones-design-web-ouch)[/url]
It was actually just the first part. Here’s the second part: [url=http://blog-cafe.com/index.php/2005/03/27/94-medias-francophones-et-standards-web-ouch]http://blog-cafe.com/index.php/2005/03/27/94-medias-francophones-et-standards-web-ouch[/url] … and it’s just as appauling!
March 30th, 2005 at 2:26 pm
Wow, a lot of ground to cover in this post….
When is comes to standards, the problem is a complicated one.
Designing for W3 standards (be it HTML or XHTML) is something easy if you train yourself to follow guidelines.
Why does it seem so difficult to implement?
In my experience there are many reasons.
You have so called web designers (basically a graphic artist) that are ignorant of the standards themselves. All their code is generated by Frontpage, Dreamweaver or some other WYSIWYG software. As long as the client accepts the final product they are happy.
Clients themselves are ignorant of the standards so you cant really fault them.
You do have certain clients that will insist that the site look good on their setup (usually a laptop with a high screen resolution), so they end up with a site catered to them, and no one else
In the case of dynamic websites, you can often hand off W3 compliant templates to programmers. Now, many programmers dont view HTML to be code, and,for lack of a better term, have no respect for the code. The programmers job is to get an application to work within their framework, as long as it displays okay, damn the standards
Programmers have a way of over engineering applications and using a new technique because they want a challenge or be able to experiment. This is not to say that all web programmers are like that, just too many .
Finally you have the web browsers they can have buggy implementations of the web standards or follow their own version. Now, even if you do follow proper HTML implementation, your displayed results can be different from browser to browser.
Another issue is one of design to sell a web site, you often have to wow your client with a look at it may mean that you have to forego some standards for the look.
There is also a time factor involved in getting standards right. Ironically, Miss Hontebeyrie blog site has done with error on the link you have given(IE 6.0 on XP). Where does the problem lie in her case? Most likely with the software she is using. But Im sure that almost all web surfers can read her site, so where is the incentive to correct her blog?
Standards in web design is a subject Im keenly interested in and Im sure we could comment for many more post.
March 30th, 2005 at 2:26 pm
You mention finding a kindred spirit with similar thoughts and that is one of the great things about the web and blogs. But there is a downside to all of this. Sites such as [url=http://www.epinions.com]www.epinions.com[/url] are great in theory. You have consumers that are rating products and services based on real world experience. I used to have a look there myself for certain products but how to you distinguish between a earnest review written by a consumer and one written by salesmen? You cant.
Now, by reading how great Lasik is one would be tempted to thing that its the greatest thing in the world if you need it. It may well be, but its a highly subjective opinion. I have read horror stories about Lasik (and similar surgeries), whom should I trust?