Comments on: Seven client-side web peeves http://www.techleader.co.za/derekabdinor/2008/06/25/7-client-side-web-peeves/ Thu, 17 May 2012 14:15:28 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.2 By: derek http://www.techleader.co.za/derekabdinor/2008/06/25/7-client-side-web-peeves/#comment-24522 derek Fri, 27 Jun 2008 10:19:41 +0000 http://www.techleader.co.za/derekabdinor/2008/06/25/7-client-side-web-peeves/#comment-24522 Thanks for your comments. CSS is heading towards a kind of XSL future. In which case revisionists will try split the twain (like HTML 5 and XHTML). I don't know the answer here, but I feel that because CSS is already in there doing style and wee transforming (after: before) let it do more of the latter. Thanks for your comments.
CSS is heading towards a kind of XSL future. In which case revisionists will try split the twain (like HTML 5 and XHTML). I don’t know the answer here, but I feel that because CSS is already in there doing style and wee transforming (after: before) let it do more of the latter.

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]]> By: jerith http://www.techleader.co.za/derekabdinor/2008/06/25/7-client-side-web-peeves/#comment-24503 jerith Thu, 26 Jun 2008 11:51:41 +0000 http://www.techleader.co.za/derekabdinor/2008/06/25/7-client-side-web-peeves/#comment-24503 Some comments on your points: 1. This should be approached with caution. The critical features of a webapp should work without JS/AJAX/Buzzword. Visiting a website on a mobile browser and being told that you can't read the content because you don't have JS is unforgivable. 2. 100% agreement here. I don't have jerith@mail.foo.com as my mail address or jerith@xmpp.foo.com as my jabber ID, don't make me type extra stuff for your website. 3. I cannot think of a single compelling reason to use popup windows these days. Make it a part of the page and AJAX-load it or something. (For the non-JS case, reload the page.) 4. This is tricky to get rid of and generally doesn't hurt too much. I'm happy for it to fade away slowly. 5. I disagree with drop-downs. They require JS or some other dynamic client-side thing and they usually break on nonstandard browsers (often even Firefox), usually in a way that makes the site unusable. At the very least, degrade these to a nested list in the absence of JS. 6. SEO is a horrible marketing term. If you design a good, standards-compliant site, search engines will be happy with it already. All the old "SEO tricks" usually end up giving you page rank penalties these days anyway. I can see that you're trying to say "good web design is good", but this has nothing to do with SEO. 7. Templating and stuff in general. I can see where you're going with this, and I'm not entirely sure I agree. CSS is useful, but it's already overcomplicated and difficult to get right across browsers. I don't spend as much time thinking about these and similar issues as I possibly should. Then again, I tend to spend that time considering backend stuff so it probably balances out in the end. Some comments on your points:

1. This should be approached with caution. The critical features of a webapp should work without JS/AJAX/Buzzword. Visiting a website on a mobile browser and being told that you can’t read the content because you don’t have JS is unforgivable.

2. 100% agreement here. I don’t have jerith@mail.foo.com as my mail address or jerith@xmpp.foo.com as my jabber ID, don’t make me type extra stuff for your website.

3. I cannot think of a single compelling reason to use popup windows these days. Make it a part of the page and AJAX-load it or something. (For the non-JS case, reload the page.)

4. This is tricky to get rid of and generally doesn’t hurt too much. I’m happy for it to fade away slowly.

5. I disagree with drop-downs. They require JS or some other dynamic client-side thing and they usually break on nonstandard browsers (often even Firefox), usually in a way that makes the site unusable. At the very least, degrade these to a nested list in the absence of JS.

6. SEO is a horrible marketing term. If you design a good, standards-compliant site, search engines will be happy with it already. All the old “SEO tricks” usually end up giving you page rank penalties these days anyway. I can see that you’re trying to say “good web design is good”, but this has nothing to do with SEO.

7. Templating and stuff in general. I can see where you’re going with this, and I’m not entirely sure I agree. CSS is useful, but it’s already overcomplicated and difficult to get right across browsers.

I don’t spend as much time thinking about these and similar issues as I possibly should. Then again, I tend to spend that time considering backend stuff so it probably balances out in the end.

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