April 18, 2004

Good, the Bad, and the Standard

There is some dissension in the ranks! Should standards pioneering websites not be recognized just because everyone has seen them? Aren’t some of the people you are trying to reach the ones who don’t use standards? They may be unaware still of what possibilities lie before them. Shouldn’t we put our collective good foot forward? The debate continues (scroll down a bit) in the comments at The Web Standards Awards under the shadow of a well deserved winner, Todd Dominey’s Whatdoiknow.org.

While on the standards tip, I fixed (and by fixed I mean reduced breakage) of my site in Mac IE 5 at a resolution of 800 x 600 or less, which Mr. Meyer mentions here. Now it only starts to overlap once you are on the short side of about 680 pixels wide or so. On the plus side, I also fixed (and by fixed, I mean fixed) the Windows IE problem which prevented the lovely background water stain on the right-hand side of the site from displaying. Inexplicably, removing the comments from my markup solved the problem. You might ask yourself, why did that work? Well, I don’t have a clue why that worked, maybe you can answer that question for me. If you do, you win a candy bar of your choice (under $2). Don’t pick anything lame either, like something with coconut. God says only rapists and pedophiles eat coconut. You aren’t disagreeing with God, are you? Well?!

Commentary (7):

1. kalamuki says… apr 19, 2004 | 4:20 am

Hello, nice work!
While you’re at it, could you possibly consider on being polite to Safari and adding dimensions to Current Leisure -pictures? At least this browser version thinks that there is no picture at all if it doesn’t have width and height -attributes. The text overlays(?) the picture occasionally. Just a thought. Cheers!

2. kalamuki says… apr 19, 2004 | 4:33 am

..or is it Amazon’s problem? Questions, questions…

3. Jason Santa Maria says… apr 19, 2004 | 7:15 am

Ah! You have found another one of this site’s dirty little secrets. Well, its not really a secret I suppose. Not like the Indian burial ground this site was built on top of.

Being a Safari user myself, I have noticed this problem. The text overlap seems to only happen on the first entry in the Current Leisure section, the Listening one. For some reason, none of the others are effected. The markup is exactly the same, and I can’t figure it out. I assume it must be Safari. If there was a set of standardized dimensions, I could code for it, but they are different for everything that appears in the Leisure section, that’s on Amazon’s shoulders.

4. bearskinrug says… apr 20, 2004 | 11:03 am

When I view your site in any browser, I’ve noticed that you are a jerk. Can you fix that?

5. cashdollar says… apr 20, 2004 | 11:33 am

I have noticed that when bearskin views your site, he becomes irate and prone to leaving comments that can be construed as “inappropriate” according to the TMX sexual harassment guide. Please help us, help him.

6. Rob Weychert says… apr 20, 2004 | 1:46 pm

As a non-employee, I am thankful to be exempt from the TMX sexual harassment guide, which would otherwise prevent me from expressing my view that both bearskin and cashdollar are hiding some fine asses in their trousers.

7. bearskinrug says… apr 21, 2004 | 1:47 pm

Well I can’t argue that.