Re: Examples Debian WWW with css

[Mike Hommey <mh@glandium.org>]

On Wed, Nov 17, 2004 at 10:53:40PM +0100, Jutta Wrage wrote:
(...)
> Do not think they must be there. I did it only to show, that it is 
> possible to go to css instead of tables without changing the outfit.

I personally think the current outfit is all but sexy and should be
changed.

> Yes, that is exactly, what I wanted. If there are suggestions, I can 
> make an example. But another Idea is to go to css first and then change 
> layout in a second step.

My idea would be to go to clean html code first, and then tweak the
visual.

> >When I tried a redesign of the debian home page a while ago[1],
> 
> That looks nice, too. May I ask why you did not success?

I didn't have time to go further.

> > i've hit
> >some issues that might be worth considering, such as page size. There
> >are stuff in pages that are likely to be useful in less than 1% of the
> >cases that eat a huge amount of its size, such as "Select a server near
> >you" and the full language list.
> 
> I think, there can be a solution with combination of css and language 
> negotiation.
> But I really do not think, that the lists are a real problem, even id I 
> would make a selection form out of the lanuage list, too.

They are *huge* they are a page weight problem.

> >Then, the next step would be to decide how to do it, and if i recall
> >correctly, somebody posted here a list of stuff to do for a transition
> >to xhtml from the current stuff.
> 
> xhtml has some problems at all: No complete validation at w3c, syntax 
> change against html and some browsers falling back to html 2.0, if 
> xhtml is incorrect.
> Personally I'd prefer html 4 strict.

html 4 strict and xhtml are the same, with a very few exceptions.
converting from one to the other is a matter of using xmllint to
format the code accordingly.

> As the site is very large, it would not be a good idea to change 
> everything at the same time. Migration to either HTML 4.0 strict or 
> XHTML is independent from moving to css layout instead of tables.

Moving to css layout instead of tables implies changing enough that it
makes no difference whether it is xhtml or html 4 strict.

There's no hurry to move to css layout if the html code isn't
cleaned-up.

Mike