Lowter - New Comments

With some luck it means that my current computer w…

Frans — Mon, 17 Nov 2008 15:41:57 -0600

With some luck it means that my current computer will last longer than any computer I've previously owned had the chance to. ;)

At Lowter we use to use some JS to load a special …

Ethan Poole — Fri, 14 Nov 2008 15:32:14 -0600

At Lowter we use to use some JS to load a special CSS file for smaller screens that got rid of a few columns so content was easily readable. The only thing with this is that it's unreliable because so many people have JavaScript turned off. It's an okay solution, but again not the best.

As for mobile sites, I think those should be seperate mainly to reduce file size anyway. But, yes, a seperate layout for them is certainly best.

Of course, Opera solves a lot of these problems, but with their small market share we can't rely on them to solve the issue, sadly of course.

"Well, I don't think it's plausible to support any…

Frans — Fri, 14 Nov 2008 09:55:59 -0600

"Well, I don't think it's plausible to support anything under 800x600 because images start to collide and such."

I'm not suggesting to have the same layout exactly... that would for the most part result in a meager bit of text with giant sidebars obscuring everything. However, it's not a lot of work to use a media query to accomodate for mobile devices. My cellphone has a width of 320px, the iPhone has a width of 480px, and few mobile devices have a screen width that exceeds 600px (and don't forget about devices like the EEE PC with 800Ã�480 pixels, although that falls within the scope of what you originally wrote). Apple can talk about Safari on the iPhone being like a desktop browser, but unless websites are specifically tailored toward it, it will remain clearly inferior rather than simply different experience.

Aside from that I find maximized browser usage a very unproductive way of using one's browser. I need to compare information, hold it next to each other etc etc.

Btw, I find the BBC News website perfectly fine to browse on aforementioned 700px.

Anyway, Opera's fit to width, mobile view, quickly disabling author styles and such usually aid me quite well in defeating obstructive author styles.

http://lofotenmoose.info is an example of a site that handles resizing (including pictures, for example) very well thanks to some relatively easy, but effective, CSS. Of course it won't work in IE, but on mobile devices, Opera is king (and semi-runner-up Safari supports plenty as well).

I suppose that ideally there would be about 3 or 4 different layouts around the same theme. One for windows/devices of about <500px, one for windows with about 500-1000px, and one for windows of >1000px. My potential 4th would be one for >1200px and could employ CSS3 column techniques. Anyway, where you would draw the lines is entirely up to how you want the fluid layout to behave, but in any case I think "static" layouts work better in the sense of max-width:1000px than as width:1000px.

However, the more decent a website was created, the easier it is for Opera to reformat it to a smaller view/screen format automatically and thus the less required a specific media query and/or stylesheet becomes necessary.

That's the main reason I like fixed layouts, their…

Doug — Fri, 14 Nov 2008 07:58:30 -0600

That's the main reason I like fixed layouts, their very consistant.

I always try to make my layouts fit into a 800px w…

Matt Oakes — Fri, 14 Nov 2008 03:12:44 -0600

I always try to make my layouts fit into a 800px width browser window so that people don't have to scroll. However I sometimes make it a fixed with website for similicity and consitancy.

A lot of websites, however, haven't adopted the "l…

Ethan Poole — Thu, 13 Nov 2008 21:31:15 -0600

A lot of websites, however, haven't adopted the "less important" sidebar with these bigger layouts. Two I can think of off of the top of my head is CNET.com and BBC News. I think having a non-necessary sidebar is an acceptable practice, but I still think resizable layouts are better.

I like the 1024px width layouts, their quite reaso…

Doug — Thu, 13 Nov 2008 20:48:30 -0600

I like the 1024px width layouts, their quite reasonable. The content still fits within the 800px width of smaller monitors, and a bit of extra content is off to the side. You know it's there, but you're often not losing much by not scrolling over.

Well, I don't think it's plausible to support anyt…

Ethan Poole — Thu, 13 Nov 2008 20:42:18 -0600

Well, I don't think it's plausible to support anything under 800x600 because images start to collide and such. I think you missed my main point in this post. Mainly, sites use to acknowledge that 1024x768 is the "target" screen size, but it would shrink for 800x600 and at least work, but maybe not look as pretty.

On my current screen width of about 700px I have t…

Frans — Thu, 13 Nov 2008 19:05:10 -0600

On my current screen width of about 700px I have to scroll horizontally on Lowter. :P Opera's fit to width function works extremely well on nearly every site btw.

Well, PunBB 1.3 is actually based on FluxBB 1.3 I …

Frans — Tue, 11 Nov 2008 14:32:15 -0600

Well, PunBB 1.3 is actually based on FluxBB 1.3 I think? The point was that there wasn't enough control according to the people behind FluxBB... however PunBB 1.3 is deemed stable now and FluxBB 1.3 isn't yet. I suppose this means they'll diverge and won't have plugin compatibility anymore.

It is a nice website and I'm sure they had it plan…

Matt Oakes — Mon, 10 Nov 2008 12:32:55 -0600

It is a nice website and I'm sure they had it planned for a while. One he was elected I'm sure he was allowed access to the .gov domian. No idea what the process is with using it though.

I haven't really checked out FluxBB, but to me it …

Ethan Poole — Sun, 09 Nov 2008 18:40:12 -0600

I haven't really checked out FluxBB, but to me it seems idential to PunBB. They haven't made any improvments on it really, just a change in control. I'm not sure the huge benefit in that, considering it's already an open source application and control is in the hands of the community already.

Any thoughts on FluxBB?…

Frans — Sun, 09 Nov 2008 17:44:36 -0600

Any thoughts on FluxBB?

Seems nice. Will look forward to seeing it in use …

Matt Oakes — Sun, 09 Nov 2008 16:02:46 -0600

Seems nice. Will look forward to seeing it in use on Lowter soon.

I'l going to personally try to switch to camel cas…

Doug — Fri, 07 Nov 2008 08:33:31 -0600

I'l going to personally try to switch to camel casing for variable and function names. It's less typing and I can type faster when I use them.

I also use the samefunction declarations as Frans.

There was an article today on Life Hacker about Wi…

Ethan Poole — Wed, 05 Nov 2008 17:29:11 -0600

There was an article today on Life Hacker about Windows 7 booting 20% faster than Vista (external link). Good read on this topic.

Possibly some multicore enhancements and stuff but…

Matt Oakes — Tue, 04 Nov 2008 12:57:26 -0600

Possibly some multicore enhancements and stuff but I've not read a lot about that to be honest.

Vista was the big change, which is why stuff broke when you upgraded and why people became unhappy. However it's been promiced that anything that works on Vista will work 100% on 7, which suggests no major under-the-hood changes.

I've heard that they are improving performance wit…

Ethan Poole — Tue, 04 Nov 2008 10:12:58 -0600

I've heard that they are improving performance with multiple processors though, and a few other under-the-hood sounding things (boot improvements, accessibility stuff). It isn't drastic, but mainly under-the-hood tweaks.

Actually there will be very little changes under t…

Matt Oakes — Tue, 04 Nov 2008 07:12:27 -0600

Actually there will be very little changes under the hood as there were so many new ones made in Vista, such as the new video and sound subsystems that totally replaced the old ones there we're very slow compared to the new one.

The new changes in Windows 7 will be a new taskbar which looks much better (No text next to the icons), a much cleaner notification area (the bit by the clock) and getting rid of the sidebar and just putting the widgets on the desktop (Makes more sence really). There is also a new thing called librarys which are similar to what WinFS would be used for but is just an overlay over NTFS and not a whole new filesystem which is ok still I guess.

Might do a blog post of this at some point.

I have actually been playing around with Habari in…

Eugene Wee — Sun, 02 Nov 2008 10:33:17 -0600

I have actually been playing around with Habari instead of Wordpress. The plugin system there seems pretty good too.

http://habariproject.org

Well, my friend you've made a great prediction, lo…

Ethan Poole — Sat, 01 Nov 2008 22:45:25 -0500

Well, my friend you've made a great prediction, lol...

Write up a tutorial, I haven't really looked at th…

Doug — Sat, 01 Nov 2008 22:13:57 -0500

Write up a tutorial, I haven't really looked at the wordpess plugin system.

I'm interested in how it works more than how to use it, so a bit of theory would be nice (something a lot of other tutorials are missing).

I see you're point, but perhaps my point is not cl…

Ethan Poole — Thu, 30 Oct 2008 14:30:34 -0500

I see you're point, but perhaps my point is not clear. While these issues now are style issues, as you have pointed out, I am merely addressing which ones commentors support as what should be the syntax of the language. I hope this makes some sense.

When I say syntax, I mean the grammatical rules of…

Eugene Wee — Thu, 30 Oct 2008 13:45:32 -0500

When I say syntax, I mean the grammatical rules of a language, i.e., the form of its expressions, statements and other structural units. It is true that syntax is also a matter of style to the language designer and to a language user who is considering a language, but I distinguish between syntax and style because syntax is generally immutable to a language user, but style can be changed at a language user's discretion.

In other words, a debate on syntax is not just a debate of "I prefer camel case separation to underscore separation for variable names", but "I prefer programming languages that forbid underscore separation variable names so that camel case separation is the only viable choice". Likewise, it is not a question of "K&R, Allman, BSD KNF, Whitesmiths, GNU, etc?" but "free form?"

Eugune, style is a sub-field is syntax. You code …

Ethan Poole — Thu, 30 Oct 2008 10:34:48 -0500

Eugune, style is a sub-field is syntax. You code with a style of syntax, even if that particular programming language allows other styles of syntax.