Keith (Southend) wrote:
I used it on myEuropean file for 31st May 2004, it shrunk it down by
9%. You can see what it's removed as far as HTML is concerned by
comparing the two files here...by viewing the source file
http://www.southendweather.net/eu040531.html
Shrunk. Removed tabs and spaces.
and http://www.southendweather.net/eu040530.html
not shrunk
Hi Keith.
It isn't all about size, you know :-). Although this may seem off-topic,
it is relevant, as many (most?) meteorological sources (including NMCs)
fail to maximize their display potential and hence lose readers/users.
I tried a quick look at your files, both shrunk and unshrunk. Neither
file would validate as "proper" html, as there is no character
encoding specified. That's a bit like saying "This page is in
English/French/Urdu/Mandarin...you choose" If a browser can't
figure which characters to use, then the page ends up as gibberish.
The pages may still display in Internet Explorer, but that's mainly
because Internet Explorer ignores the rules too!
You use tables for display - that's fine for such tabular data and has
the useful side effect that most browsers will still display the data OK
- tables have about the best support in how browsers render the page.
However, your pages are locking out potential visitors. Try
a) Shutting off images (and see if you can navigate the data).
b) Scrolling just a little down the page (and wave goodbye to the headers).
c)I personally found the text size way too small to read...until I
turned off the style sheets. (Style sheets and "font" tags in the same
code?)
As far as accessibility goes, it is illuminating to run pages through
http://www.cynthiasays.com/ or some similar accessibility checker (as
well as
http://validator.w3.org/ of course).
There's also the issue of the code itself. Well-structured and
signposted code makes it fairly easy for someone else to spot any coding
errors one might make.
Ifyourcodeallrunsintoamesslikethisdoes,itssomuchha rdertosolve. So, while
code crunchers are fine as far as they go, writing code to standards
is a way to reduce coding, increase page usefulness and maximize your
audience. Good luck with it.
Colin.